Posts Tagged: former

Twitter’s former CEO and other execs are suing Elon Musk and X for $128 million in unpaid severance

A group of former Twitter executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, are suing Elon Musk and X over millions of dollars in unpaid severance benefits. The claims date back to the chaotic circumstances surrounding Musk’s takeover of the company in October 2022.

When Musk took control of the company, his first move was to fire Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde and general counsel Sean Edgett. According to the lawsuit, Musk had “special ire” for the group because of the role they played in the months-long court battle that forced Musk to follow through with the acquisition after he attempted to back out of the deal. According to the lawsuit, Agrawal is entitled to $ 57.4 million in severance benefits, Segal is entitled to $ 44.5 million, Gadde $ 20 million and Edgett $ 6.8 million, for a total of about $ 128 million.

The lawsuit cites Musk biographer Walter Isaacson’s account of the events, which explains that Musk rushed to close the Twitter deal a day early so he could fire the executives “for cause” just before their final stock options were set to vest. According to Isaacson, Musk bragged that the legal maneuver saved him about $ 200 million. 

“Musk doesn’t pay his bills, believes the rules don’t apply to him, and uses his wealth and power to run roughshod over anyone who disagrees with him,” the lawsuit states,“Because Musk decided he didn’t want to pay Plaintiffs’ severance benefits, he simply fired them without reason, then made up fake cause and appointed employees of his various companies to uphold his decision.”

X didn’t respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. Of note, it’s not the first time former Twitter employees have sued the company for failing to pay severance benefits. A separate lawsuit claimed Twitter owed former workers more than $ 500 million in unpaid severance. Agrawal, Segal and Gadde also previously sued the company over unpaid legal bills as a result of shareholder lawsuits and other investigations that resulted from Musk’s takeover,

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitters-former-ceo-and-other-execs-are-suing-elon-musk-and-x-for-128-million-in-unpaid-severance-231428042.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Former Trump ‘fixer’ Michael Cohen admits using Google Bard to cite bogus court cases

Donald Trump’s former “fixer,” Michael Cohen, used Google Bard to cite made-up legal cases that ended up in a federal court. The New York Times reported Friday that Cohen admitted in unsealed court papers that he passed on documents referencing bogus cases to his lawyer, who then relayed them to a federal judge. Cohen reportedly wrote in the sworn declaration he hadn’t stayed on top of “emerging trends (and related risks) in legal technology.”

Cohen’s legal team filed the paperwork in a motion asking for an early end to court supervision from his 2018 campaign finance case, for which he served three years in prison. After Cohen’s attorney, David M. Schwartz, presented the legal documents to the federal court, Judge Jesse M. Furman of the Federal District Court said he was having trouble finding the three decisions cited by Schwartz (via Cohen).

Judge Furman told Schwartz that if he couldn’t provide documentation of the cases, the attorney needed to provide “a thorough explanation of how the motion came to cite cases that do not exist and what role, if any, Mr. Cohen played in drafting or reviewing the motion before it was filed.” Schwartz must also explain why he shouldn’t be sanctioned “for citing nonexistent cases to the court.” Cohen is a former lawyer who was disbarred after pleading guilty to multiple felonies.

Enter Bard. Cohen said he didn’t realize the AI bot “was a generative text service that, like ChatGPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not.” Cohen also blamed his lawyer, saying he didn’t realize Schwartz “would drop the cases into his submission wholesale without even confirming that they existed.”

Although lawyers using AI chatbots to cite hallucinated cases makes for easy comedy, this flub could have profound implications for a critical case with potential political ramifications. Cohen is expected to be the star witness in the Manhattan criminal case against Trump for allegedly falsifying business records. The Bard flub gives Trump’s lawyers new ammunition to discredit the onetime fixer.

Cohen joins the company of ChatGPT Lawyer Steven Schwartz, who cited made-up cases (sourced through OpenAI’s chatbot) in a civil case earlier this year. He was allegedly joined by the attorney for Fugees rapper Pras Michel. In October, the artist accused his lawyer of using an AI program he may have had a financial stake in to produce his closing arguments.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/former-trump-fixer-michael-cohen-admits-using-google-bard-to-cite-bogus-court-cases-184125792.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Apple drops lawsuit against former exec who accused company of spying

After more than three years of litigation, Apple has quietly dropped its lawsuit against Gerard Williams III, the former chip executive the company accused of poaching employees. Williams spent nearly a decade working for Apple, leading development on some of its most important chips – including the A7, the first 64-bit processor for mobile devices.

In 2019, Williams left Apple to co-found Nuvia, a chip design firm later acquired by Qualcomm in 2021. When the tech giant first sued Williams, it accused him of “secretly” starting Nuvia and recruiting talent for his startup while he was still an Apple employee. Williams disputed Apple’s claims and accused the company of spying on his text messages.

As reported by Bloomberg, Apple filed a request to dismiss the suit against Williams earlier this week. The document does not state the company’s reason for dropping the case. However, it does say Apple did so “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot file the same claim against Williams again. It also suggests the two sides came to a settlement. Apple did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.

In the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s dismissal request, court documents show Apple sought the recusal of Judge Sunil Kulkarni. Around March 17th, 2023, the company added two lawyers from the legal firm Morrison and Foerster to the team litigating its case against Williams. On March 28th, Judge Sunil Kulkarni filed a brief disclosing that he had worked at Morrison and Foerster for approximately 13 years and had kept in contact “over the years” with Bryan Wilson and Ken Kuwayti, the two “MoFo” attorneys Apple hired on as counsel earlier in the month.

“I have occasional social interactions with them (e.g., bimonthly lunches, seeing them at parties of mutual friends, and so on),” Judge Kulkarni wrote. “I believe I have recused myself from past cases involving Mr. Wilson and/or Mr. Kuwayti, but solely as a prophylactic measure.” After learning of the involvement of his former colleagues, Judge Kulkarni held an “informal” meeting with the two sides where he said he was “leaning toward recusal” if Apple retained the counsel of either Wilson or Kuwayti. In that same meeting, Kulkarni says he told Apple and Williams his recusal from the case would likely mean a delay in the case going to trial. Before the meeting, the case was scheduled to go to trial on October 2nd, 2023.

In a brief filed on April 6th, Williams and his legal team came out strongly against the idea of Judge Kulkarni removing himself from the case, arguing Apple’s position on the subject “should not matter” and that the move had the potential to be “prejudicial” against the former exec.

“Given that this case has been pending for over three years – with a fast-approaching discovery deadline and trial date – and given the Court’s familiarity with the parties, the case history, and the applicable law, the Court’s recusal decision has the potential to be prejudicial and disruptive,” the brief states. It then argues it was Apple that introduced a potential conflict of interest to the case.

“Even if a conflict existed that might warrant recusal, the procedure imposed by the Court – allowing the party that introduced the ‘conflict’ and would theoretically stand to benefit from it – to decide whether to waive it is inconsistent with basic rules of fairness and due process,” the brief concludes. “Such a procedure would set a dangerous precedent for judge shopping in the middle of a case: any part, at any time, could recruit former colleagues of a sitting judge and then force his or her recusal.”

Putting together what happened after that point is more difficult. However, after the 6th, the court in Santa Clara held multiple hearings where no one from either side appeared. Apple then filed to dismiss the case on April 26th. Qualcomm, Williams’ current employer, did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-drops-lawsuit-against-former-exec-who-accused-company-of-spying-211547595.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Samsung taps a former Mercedes-Benz designer to lead its mobile design team

Samsung’s mobile division has a new design chief. On Friday, the company announced the appointment of Hubert H. Lee to head up its Mobile eXperience (MX) Design Team, the unit responsible for designing some of Samsung’s most visible products, including its flagship Galaxy S series phones. Lee joins the electronics giant after a stint as the chief design officer of Mercedes-Benz China, a position that saw him lead the automaker’s design teams in China and the US. “His unique and visionary perspective will help shape the look and feel of Galaxy, building on the distinct design ethos that users know and love,” Samsung said.

It will probably be at least a year before we see Lee start to leave his mark on Samsung’s products. Prelease leaks of the company’s next Galaxy S series phones suggest they’ll look a lot like their Galaxy S22 predecessors. What’s more, with the way smartphone development timelines work, Samsung has likely already settled on a design for its 2024 flagship. Even then, don’t expect dramatic changes; from a design standpoint, phone companies have played it safe for more than a decade. Still, Lee could push for small but meaningful tweaks to Samsung's design formula — much like Evans Hankey did at Apple after Jony Ive's departure


Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Former eBay execs get prison time in cyberstalking case involving Twitter threats and fetal pig deliveries

Two of the eBay executives who were charged for staging a cyberstalking campaign against the creators of the eCommerceBytes newsletter have been sentenced to prison. The Justice Department says that these execs, along with five other former eBay employees, worked together to intimidate David and Ina Steiner. They apparently hatched a scheme targeting the Steiners shortly after Ina published an article in their newsletter about a lawsuit eBay filed accusing Amazon of poaching its sellers. David said the people involved in their harassment made their lives "a living hell."

James Baugh, eBay's former senior director of safety and security, was sentenced to almost five years in prison and was ordered to pay a fine of $ 40,000. Meanwhile, David Harville, eBay's former Director of Global Resiliency and the last person in the case who pleaded guilty, got a two-year sentence and was ordered to pay a $ 20,000 fine. 

According to the DOJ, the group sent disturbing deliveries to the couple's home, including "a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig, a funeral wreath and live insects." They also sent the couple threatening Twitter messages and posted on Craigslist to invite the public to partake in sexual encounters at the victims' home. Authorities also said that Baugh, Harville and another eBay employee monitored the couple's home in person with the intention of attaching a GPS tracker to their car. 

Based on the case's court documents, David Wenig, who was eBay's CEO at the time, sent another top exec a message that said "If you are ever going to take her down … now is the time" 30 minutes after Ina's post was published. In turn, that executive sent Wenig's message to Baugh, adding that Ina was a "biased troll who needs to get BURNED DOWN." As The Washington Post notes, Wenig was not charged in the case but is facing a civil lawsuit from the Steiners, who accused him of attempting to "intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them." He denied any knowledge of the harassment campaign. 

As for Baugh and Harville, both asked the Steiners for forgiveness, according to The Post. "I take 100% responsibility for this, and there is no excuse for what I have done. The bottom line is simply this: If I had done the right thing and been strong enough to make the right choice, we wouldn’t be here today, and for that I am truly sorry," Baugh said.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Final former eBay employee involved in bizarre EcommerceBytes harassment case pleads guilty

Earlier this week, David Harville, one of seven former eBay employees involved in a 2020 campaign to harass the creators of a newsletter critical of the e-commerce company, pleaded guilty to five federal felony charges, ending one of the most bizarre episodes in recent tech history.

In June 2020, the US Department of Justice charged six former eBay employees, including Harville, with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses. Of the group, Harville was the final employee to admit involvement in the harassment campaign that targeted Ina and David Steiner, The Associated Press reported on Thursday.

In 2019, the Massachusetts couple published an article in their EcommerceBytes newsletter about litigation involving eBay. Responding to what they considered negative coverage of the company, the group carried out a harassment campaign that involved, among other actions, sending the couple a preserved fetal pig, live spiders and a funeral wreath. They also created fake social media accounts to send threatening messages to the Steiners and share their home address online.

According to the Department of Justice’s original 2020 filing, part of Harville’s involvement in the campaign included a plot to install a GPS tracking device on the Steiner’s car. Harville, alongside James Baugh, one of the other former employees charged in the scheme, carried with them fake documents allegedly designed to show the two were investigating the Steiners for threatening eBay executives.

Last July, a federal judge sentenced Philip Cooke, the first of the seven former employees convicted in the scheme, to 18 months in prison. At the time, US District Judge Allison Burroughs called the entire case “just nuts.” That same summer, the Steiners sued several eBay employees, including former CEO Devin Wenig, for carrying out a conspiracy to “intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them.” Wenig has denied having any knowledge of the campaign.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Former employees claim Talkspace mined therapy transcripts for marketing

According to The New York Times, Talkspace, an iOS and Android app people can use to message a certified therapist, routinely mined the transcripts of its users to give it a competitive edge. The paper interviewed two former employees who claim Talks…
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Apple hires former Samsung exec to lead its battery division

Apple has poached the head of Samsung's battery division to lead its own battery development efforts. Cupertino hired Samsung SDI's Soonho Ahn to become its Global Head of Battery Developments, Bloomberg has reported after spotting the major career m…
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Apple hires former Tesla and Microsoft senior designer

Apple has hired Andrew Kim, formerly of Tesla and Microsoft, to bolster its design team. Kim captured the attention of many in 2011 with a custom iOS device stand and again in 2012 when, as a fan, he shared his vision for an overhaul of Microsoft's b…
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Google hires former Xbox, PlayStation exec Phil Harrison

Phil Harrison followed up almost two decades as an executive for both Sony and Microsoft as an investor in computer and video game companies. But he's moving back to the tech world with a new role as Vice President and GM of Google, Harrison announce…
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Former Googler Vic Gundotra extols iPhone 7 Plus camera, pans Android photo ecosystem

In some Facebook postings over the weekend, Vic Gundotra shared his opinion about the state of smartphone photography and it is sure to rankle Android fans. Gundotra, who is mainly credited with the Google+ social network although he also played a big part in evangelizing Android, opined on the how well smartphones compare to traditional […]

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Former Epix exec pleads guilty over $7 million fraud

In 2009, Viacom, Lionsgate and MGM joined forces to launch a premium movie channel called Epix, with Emil Rensing as its Chief Digital Officer. Turns out hiring Rensing was a bad move: according to the Justice Department, he has just pleaded guilty t…
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Google hires a former White House employee to help with policy issues

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You are a large company with a few issues, but need congress to pass a few bills, lean in your favour, or just grease a few palms. How do you do it? Easy, you hire someone who has worked at the White House before and knows all the ins-and-outs of the trade.

That is exactly what Google has done by hiring former White House deputy national security adviser, Caroline Atkinson. She will now be working for Google to lead its public policy efforts. This means she will be handling some very large and tough legal issues Google has been having such as antitrust allegationsEurope’s right to be forgotten laws, general censorship, and more.

Atkinson is a pretty great hire on paper. Other than the White House she has also worked as a journalist and an official at the International Monetary Fund. She shouldn’t have too much trouble handling Google’s issues.

Source: New York Times

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