Leveling an accusation isn't hard, but making somebody plead the fifth in a civil case where they haven't done anything wrong is. When one of your executives is refusing to cooperate with an internal investigation because it might expose him to criminal liability, that's a little past "From my point of view, Waymo is evil."

Making somebody? How should he have reacted? What exactly is the point of pleading the fifth if by doing so you incriminate yourself?

I plead the fifth when I get pulled over, am I a criminal? I don't understand. It seems to me the absolute smartest course of action - place the burden of proof entirely on the opposition, give them nothing to work with you don't have to.

You seem to have missed the point that this is not a criminal case, so the Fifth Amendment doesn't apply here. By pleading the fifth, he's not just declining to testify — he's claiming that the result of cooperating here would open him to a whole different criminal case.

In other words, nobody is saying that he has incriminated himself by pleading the fifth. But in Uber's civil case, he has created some very bad implications and greatly worsened their position, and it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to see him as a liability at this point. This is not a mere accusation by Waymo — his actions indicate that there's something going on here.

The problem is: they have enough. Like a logging system with documented external audits and the sworn testimony of the engineers that run it, and it shows him downloading those documents.

And the fifth amendment protects you from "adverse inference" in criminal proceedings. It doesn't protect you in a civil suit, nor does it bind me or others in this thread or the general public to conclude that yes, Levandowsky's trucking company is probably heading for a wall.

Nobody seemed to mind when Shkreli plead the fifth all the way through a congressional hearing, not sure how this is different. Other than the obvious fact that it's not a congressional hearing.

This argument doesn't follow. Your link explains why frivolous lawsuits are more of a myth than most people believe. You then proceed to lambaste people for people bowing to lawsuits which, your source contends, are probably more reasonable than you think.

I don't really understand what you point out, and I believe this is the misunderstanding:

> You then proceed to lambast people for people bowing to lawsuits

GitHub and other cases aren't lawsuits, that's my point: They're just people being fired without fair trial. It doesn't prove there was harassment/theft/conflict/etc. What I'm saying is we should apply the presumption of innocence and not demote people preemptively, but help the real justice system investigate whether accusations are true.