Judge Alsup: "Even though he is not a defendant here, moreover, Levandowski’s assertion of his Fifth Amendment privilege has obstructed and continues to obstruct both discovery and defendants’ ability to construct a complete narrative as to the fate of Waymo’s purloined files. As a practical matter, it is hard to imagine how consolidating proceedings as to Levandowski and defendants, whether here or in arbitration, could alleviate these difficulties."
The judge raises this to show that Levandowski's interests and Uber's interests are not aligned. Thus, consolidating Waymo vs. Levandowski (which doesn't exist) with Waymo vs. Uber is not an option. Thus, Uber can't claim that Levandowski's arbitration contract with Waymo covers Uber's problems.
Therefore, Waymo can insist their case against Uber go to trial.
Here is some context for those who aren't current on the case.
One result of the injunction (all of the hearings up until now) was that uber needs to use all of its power to compel levandowski to testify, the extreme limit of which is firing him. Uber followed through as was legally required
This is one part of a number of things that came out of preliminary injunction hearings, other parts are (1) the breadth of the case is much smaller than as originally filed, its now about trade secrets, not about patent infringement (2) Waymo is allowed a bit more indepth "discover" to see if they can find evidence of their tech in ubers documents or in ubers hardware itself.
Legally, there is no inference that can be drawn from this to imply uber is guilty, they have willfully carried out a court order.
Uber still has a self driving car program, that is staffed by a few hundred engineers.
The case against levandowski has been referred to a federal prosecutor to review the possiblity of criminal charges against levandowski, if I was his lawyer and he was in this position, I would likely refer him to "plead the fifth" regardless of his guilt.
>Evidence. I'll wait for the results of the hearing to see what the overall judgement is. Have you forgotten that all trials have evidence both for and against? But the evidence wasn't enough to issue a preliminary injunction, which means that there is no smoking gun.
Yes there was, that's what this document is.
>A preliminary injunction was issues against Levandowski
No, a preliminary injunction was issues against Uber preventing Levandowski from working on things. As far as the court is concerned, Levandowski isn't a party in this case. To be clear, this Order is an injunction against Uber, no one else. That's the way the court sees it (and this has been made pretty clear in prior arguments).
There was enough evidence to issue a preliminary injunction against uber, just not one that required them to stop working on lidar completely. This is despite what Alsup says at the end of page 12, which I read as being the main reason (and again, alsup clearly states this in footnote six) that the injunctive relief isn't stronger. Or in other words, Alsup was, based on the evidence provided, willing to place a stronger injunction against Uber, but has not as a way to 'punish' Waymo for overreaching in some of its claims.
I'd take some time to read section D. It pretty clearly explains all of this (basically, Waymo asked for the court to account for Adverse Interference to make a stronger judgement, and the court denied because Waymo was also misbehaving).
> In the transcript of a private hearing before Judge William Alsup in United States District Court in San Francisco, Mr. Levandowski’s lawyers said he was invoking his Fifth Amendment right to avoid incrimination in turning over documents relevant to the case. Uber’s lawyers said they have made clear to Mr. Levandowski that he needs to release any documents relevant to the case as part of discovery.
Does Levandowski also have his own lawyers? Says here that his lawyers said he was invoking his 5th amendment, while Uber lawyers said he needs to turn over all documents
> Not a lawyer, but it's my understanding there is no 5th amendment protections in a civil suit/trial.
It was weirder than that. Levandowski was claiming that Uber couldn't turn information over to Google because it might incriminate Levandowski, when Levandowski wasn't one of the parties in the lawsuit. Unsurprisingly, that didn't fly.
> Uber is in no position to deny it, only Lewandowsky could. And he can't deny it, because then he could no longer invoke his right to remain silent.
So he should give up his 5th amendment right to fend off an accusation? I don't think so, that doesn't sound like justice to me.
>documentation from Waymo/Google is also pretty strong apparently.
pretty
apparently
Come on man, you know what angle I'll go for here. Why are you letting that slip? The documentation aka evidence hasn't been seen yet because this case hasn't gone to court. None of the most relevant facts of the case have come to light.
I'm happy to hop on the "Uber is evil" train after the case, but it is painful to watch the normally quite rational people on HN fall for such a typical fallacy of justice.
Some context: any litigator will have access to Westlaw or Lexis-Nexis to look up and verify cited authorities like cases. It’s considered bad practice, at best, to cite authorities that one has not reviewed—for example, case citations drawn from a treatise or article.
As a practical matter, it is inconceivable to me that the attorney here, at least upon being ordered by the court to provide copies of the cases he cited, did not look them up in West or Lexis and see that they don’t exist. That he appears to have pressed on at that point, and asked ChatGPT to generate them—which would take some pointed prompting—was just digging his own hole. That, more than anything, may warrant professional discipline.
Elon Musk asked a U.S. judge on Friday to throw out a $258 billion racketeering lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to support the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.
> It is undisputed that the plaintiff's IP address was forwarded to Google when the plaintiff visited the defendant's website.
In this context, "It is undisputed" does not mean "It is a truth universally acknowledged by everyone", but rather "there is no dispute between the defendant and the plaintiff that this happened; in the light of that non-disagreement, the court is not required to decide whether that happened or not, and will accept that as a fact".
So in this case, the defendant (as well as the plaintiff, of course) agreed that "the plaintiff's IP address was forwarded to Google when the plaintiff visited the defendant's website". If there was a place to bring forward this "agency argument", this was the place; however the defendant seems to have chosen not to bring it forward.
It may be because the defendant's lawyers are unprofessional and forgot; it may also be because they are professional and so they knew this argument would not hold.
I'm actually interested in seeing this go to a decision in the courts. There's clearly a division of opinion in the discussion here, and it would make for an interesting case and precedent.
> If your Agreement provides for the defense of third party claims
I think this is saying "you have to let our lawyers argue on your behalf. If you fight it with your own shitty lawyers and lose, we won't pay your losses".
> Is it the case that lawyers don't want anyone to understand the technical issues, but they only have the ability to get rid of potential jurors, not judges?
Pretty sure this accurately describes the situation.
> So he should give up his 5th amendment right to fend off an accusation
You're missing the point. The fifth just says that you can't have your silence held against you. Once you answer the question by saying anything at all, then the answers can be used against you, especially if you're lying. I believe he's under oath in these proceedings.
> None of the most relevant facts of the case have come to light.
No, we're talking about the judge's statements, somebody who has seen all the evidence and is speaking as a professional jurist.
And unlike the rest of the Uber accusations, he has gone on record with these statements after seeing some fairly strong documented evidence. The fact that we haven't seen it yet is immaterial.
> "Those are career-making cases. Those cases are your ticket. The fight would have been over who got to try them. We just didn’t have the evidence." - Holder
Yeah, well, not prosecuting those cases and then going into the private sector to defend those same types of infamous corporations, is apparently a $4 million/yr. career ticket too.[1]
I'd say there'd be a certain glamor and having your name go in the history books by winning one of those cases, but clearly there are other "career-making" choices.
>judge ruled on it, so there were definitely things being said in court
The judge ruled on the settlement, nor the actual merits of the case.
I only called it their legal argument as you did not understand what I was saying, I probably could have worded that better. It was their stated position on the issue, and is very similar to the "fully self driving" being discussed.
I am done with this, if you want to think I oversold Subway's claim, I disagree but fine.
Judge Alsup: "Even though he is not a defendant here, moreover, Levandowski’s assertion of his Fifth Amendment privilege has obstructed and continues to obstruct both discovery and defendants’ ability to construct a complete narrative as to the fate of Waymo’s purloined files. As a practical matter, it is hard to imagine how consolidating proceedings as to Levandowski and defendants, whether here or in arbitration, could alleviate these difficulties."
The judge raises this to show that Levandowski's interests and Uber's interests are not aligned. Thus, consolidating Waymo vs. Levandowski (which doesn't exist) with Waymo vs. Uber is not an option. Thus, Uber can't claim that Levandowski's arbitration contract with Waymo covers Uber's problems. Therefore, Waymo can insist their case against Uber go to trial.
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