Former Tesla employee to pay $400,000 to end lawsuit over tips to reporters
Judge Miranda Du approved and revealed a settlement between Tesla and Martin Tripp on Monday, November 30, 2020. The settlement stipulates that Tripp will pay $400,000 to Tesla. He was accused of leaking information to reporters. He admitted the charges of stealing trade secrets.
Tripp was a process technician at Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 near Reno, Nevada in 2017-2018. In 2018, Tesla fired Tripp and then sued him for writing software to hack into its manufacturing operating system and maliciously leaking trade secrets about production delays to reporters. The original suit demanded $167 million. Tripp’s lawyers said the amount was absurd.
Tripp, who proclaims himself a whistleblower, contacted the US Securities and Exchange Commission to reveal that Tesla had over-reported the production of its Model 3 sedan and would be unable to meet its commitment to produce 5,000 vehicles per week. Business Insider wrote that Tripp tipped them off that Tesla was wasting huge amounts of scrap metal and putting batteries with puncture holes into vehicles bound for consumers. Tesla denied these claims. Tripp has stated that he leaked the information because of his concern for public safety and because of Tesla’s failure to live up to its “environmental credentials.”
After Tesla sued him, Tripp retaliated with a defamation lawsuit claiming Elon Musk accused him of sabotage. Emails were sent between the two men in which Tripp accused Musk of lying to the public, and Musk called Tripp a “horrible human being.” Judge Du dismissed the counterclaim in September 2020, concluding that Tripp could not prove that Musk’s statements were malicious.
In the agreed-upon settlement, Tripp agreed to pay an additional $25,000 in sanctions to Tesla. After an emergency hearing in the case in August 2020 on the same day as Tesla’s emergency filing, the judge ordered Tripp to stop communicating confidential information. He admittedly did not stop, and so agreed to the additional fine.
In an interesting twist, Tripp fired his attorney prior to the settlement. It turns out that in August 2020 his attorney let slip that Tripp’s defense had been funded by The Funicular Fund, LP, dba Cable Car Capital LLC, one of the groups that was a TSLA short seller. After this information was released, Tripp posted this on Twitter:
“To be clear, and the docs are ALL there, I did NOT accept money to fund my litigation from a ‘short seller’. I accepted litigation financing from an investor. My Attorneys told me NOT to divulge any information re that to anyone. What is ‘denied’ in ANY court doc can and should be attributed to my former legal counsel/representation. ALL funds were provided DIRECTLY to counsel, and was used to pay for litigation expenses, including travel to/from the US for myself and Attorneys.”
A court filing describing the settlement indicates that Tripp acknowledged that his counterclaims were funded by a short-seller of Tesla stock.
Tripp is now living in Hungary. In August of 2020, he set up a GoFundMe account to help pay his judgment for sanctions. His stated goal for this account is $30,000, taking into account fees he will pay to GoFundMe and any bank transfer fees that he might incur. A recent look at his GoFundMe page shows that Tripp has made a fresh plea for assistance on December 1, 2020, and that his total donations received to date are $1,005.
