Now Uber sued for textual harassment

As did my SWMBO. While she was thinking back, it dawned on her there was an unclosable popup on a webpage. She came to me because this thing was asking for permissions. App uninstalled lickety split.

Re: Interesting approach

There are different standards of proof. So in civil court the judge or jury decide on the balance of proof, whereas in criminal trials it's beyond reasonable doubt.

Also juries aren't supposed to take any notice of whether you testify or not in criminal cases. I don't know if that's true of civil law.

So if you refuse to disclose documents and have similar tech to the company you just left, the civil judge/jury might well decide against you. Whereas for a criminal trial, that might not be enough to prove guilt. Given his company was valued at $700m, if he's nicked that data wholesale and discloses it to the civil trial, the case against him in a subsequent fraud trial is going to be rather easy to prove. Hence pleading the 5th.

That's not going to help Uber in this court case against Waymo. But presumably they can then sue him to get the money they paid for his company back, and then if he still refuses to reveal data, that helps them easily win against him. Unless of course they already knew the data was nicked, in which case, oh dear what a shame.

The tradition in the UK was been that civil litigation risks such horrendous costs that only the rich and powerful could afford to sue. This has been loosened a bit more recently with small claims tracks nd contingency fee arrangements, but the US is still in a class of its own when it comes to suing anyone on a whim for anything - but we're catching up fast, unfortunately.