Ex-CEO is highlight of second day of trial in which Google’s parent alleges Uber stole trade secrets
.. Mr. Levandowski previously has indicated he will invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Mr. Kalanick has denied any theft in depositions.
.. Waymo attorney Charles Verhoeven showed December 2015 meeting notes from former Uber executive John Bares, then the head of the self-driving program, in which Mr. Kalanick appeared to be singularly focused on lidar, as well as intellectual property.
.. Mr. Bares said the company was burning through about $20 million a month trying to develop reliable autonomous vehicles. Relying on Mr. Levandowski’s assistance would help pare the costs by speeding up development
.. Kalanick’s goal of getting 100,000 driverless cars on the road by 2020
.. Autonomous vehicles are essential to Uber’s business, Mr. Bares said, given human drivers account for 70% to 80% of the cost of operating a vehicle in ride-hailing.
.. Still, he acknowledged Google was and remains the leader in self-driving vehicle technology. “That’s the general perception right now,” he said.
Paul Manafort Sues Mueller and Asks a Judge to Narrow the Russia Investigation
But Mr. Manafort’s strategy is a clever legal maneuver that attempts to force prosecutors to reveal details about the scope of the investigation. By filing a separate lawsuit, Mr. Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, also creates the possibility of a protracted fight over Mr. Mueller’s authority.
“If the ultimate objective is to continue to try to undermine the credibility of Mueller and his prosecutors, it could have some value,” said Jimmy Gurulé, a Notre Dame law professor who was a senior Justice Department official in the administration of the first President George Bush. “But in terms of a legal strategy, it’s highly unlikely to prevail.”
.. Worse for the White House, the lawsuit also invites Mr. Mueller to give a “devastating response” that spells out all the ways Mr. Manafort is relevant to Mr. Trump and the Russia investigation
Trump may face a reckoning in case brought by female accuser
But by turning personal and branding the women liars, Trump has perhaps unwittingly played into a cutting-edge strategy in the legal pursuit of sexual misconduct — claims of defamation such as those used against comedian Bill Cosby and in a lesser-known New York case, argued by two lawyers who are now representing Zervos.
.. Trump could be called to testify, with the unwelcome specter of a former president looming over him: It was Bill Clinton’s misleading sworn testimony — not the repeated allegations of sexual harassment against him — that eventually led to his impeachment.
“It’s almost a train you can’t stop going down the tracks,” said Joseph Cammarata, who represented Paula Jones against Clinton and, more recently, represented seven Cosby accusers in a defamation suit. “It opens him up to have to answer questions about sexual relations, other relationships, what might have been said, to open up your whole life.”
.. The use of defamation to litigate an underlying allegation of sexual misconduct addresses other challenges: Often, the statute of limitations is up before accusations come to light; in some instances, the he-said-she-said nature of the testimony makes accusations hard to prove.
.. Zervos is represented by Gloria Allred and her New York based co-counsel, Mariann Meier Wang, who declined to make Zervos available for questions. Allred says she represents Zervos pro bono on her website, where she appeals for donations to pay Zervos’s other legal expenses and says excess contributions will go to rape crisis centers.
.. In news conferences, she has been asked whether targets could include outtakes from “The Apprentice,” which might show how Trump treated female contestants such as Zervos.
.. After Zervos made her allegations, Trump posted a statement on his campaign website: “To be clear, I never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately a decade ago.” He decried what he called “made up events,” “100% fabricated and made-up charges,” saying in the last presidential debate that the women were put forward by the campaign of Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, or motivated by the desire for “ten minutes of fame,” according to Zervos’s complaint.
.. “After he called me a liar I was threatened, bullied and saw my business targeted,”
.. Trump’s attorneys argue that the president is immune and that the comments he made were political opinion and therefore “squarely protected by the First Amendment.”
.. In 1997, a Supreme Court ruling made it possible for a sitting president to be sued for private actions that occurred before he took office. Trump’s attorneys are arguing that Clinton v. Jones, which applies to federal litigation, does not apply in state courts.
.. “That is where [Trump’s attorneys] are putting their linchpin,”
.. If she is deemed a private citizen, Zervos simply would have to show that Trump was negligent toward the truth. If she is a public figure, the bar is far higher.
.. “She would have to prove he knew [what he said] was false or had reckless disregard for the truth,”
.. Bill Pruitt, who worked on “The Apprentice,” tweeted, “As a producer on seasons 1 & 2 of #theApprentice I assure you: when it comes to the #trumptapes there are far worse.”
.. If, on the other hand, the suit does proceed, it could encourage more litigation against a president who entered office with an unusual array of lawsuits in his wake.
And if Zervos wins, her victory could embolden other accusers.
“There are 10 or 11 other women waiting in the wings,” Rabin said.
Although a decision in the case is not due until early next year, noise from the drama has attracted ample attention in Brussels | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images Monsanto accused of ignoring relevant scientific data on glyphosate
The accusations were made in a California case being closely watched in Europe.
Lawyers in a high-profile lawsuit in California say U.S. agri-giant Monsanto asked the court to ignore relevant scientific data and discounted reliable studies as a way of covering up the health effects associated with glyphosate, the main ingredient in its flagship herbicide.
.. “There is overwhelming evidence — whether it be the epidemiology, toxicology or mechanistic data — that exposure to glyphosate-based formulations causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma,” plaintiff lawyers told the court
.. They also argue that Monsanto relies way too heavily on one study “that was flawed from its inception,”
.. That study — the Agricultural Health Study — looked at the effects of multiple pesticides, including glyphosate, on 89,000 farmers and their spouses in Iowa and North Carolina.
.. the Monsanto Papers, show a 2015 email from William F. Heydens, a Monsanto executive, in which he is cited telling other Monsanto officials to “ghostwrite” research on glyphosate by hiring academics to put their names on papers actually written by Monsanto.