Since that would pretty much be an admission of guilt, you leave out an important detail here. This will only happen if your new employer both believes you did it, and that they will lose the case and get an unacceptable penalty imposed on them as a result.
If they intend to defend themselves, the behavior would be reversed : Legal would strongly object to your firing (or quitting) until the case is over, including all appeals and the terms for any further appeals are over and done with.
(The reference is to the President's statements before and after the election)
Many seem to be surprised reading this transcript. Yet the tone this judge is using isn't anything special. You can see that he takes extreme care not to disadvantage one side, without pretending to be some sort of soulless automaton.
Judges are supposed to be people who can be trusted to be objective. They are chosen (or, before they were elected, and politics became divisive) for their trustworthiness and objective scholarship. Historically they were well educated, of a higher class, perceived to be of a higher moral character.
The point is judges are expected to be mostly objective, and use external information responsibly.
So Uber says that to Levandowski, and he says "Sure, I'm an obedient employee, I'll give you the file if I have it. I don't have the file." Lying under oath is punishable by law (hence taking the 5th), but lying to your employer is (AFAIK) not.
Now if the judge is satisfied with that, then fair enough, but I doubt he would be. If he wants Uber to require that Levandowski not take the 5th as a condition of further employment he should just say so.
Wait, what? In the opinion of the court, a company has the authority to demand that their employee hands over the contents of his personal computer? That doesn't sound right... please, somebody tell me the US judicial system isn't that retarded!
This is absolutely the case with at-will employment, and maybe even with an executive or officer directly involved in a case even without that (and an executive likely has a contract that puts them under something other than simple at-will terms.)
> That doesn't sound right... please, somebody tell me the US judicial system isn't that retarded!
If you don't like the law, that doesn't make the judiciary retarded for correctly explaining it.
is that what you meant? I think 08-15's concern was more along the lines of an employer having the ability to demand someone to give up their personal information without their consent.
But in this case these are files that are related to the day job, and are materially impacting the business. Seems like they would be on solid ground conditioning further employment on furnishing the files.
I am guessing they do have the ability to fire on those grounds.
If they want, your employer could demand that you wear pink underwear of a particular brand at all times when in the building and fire you if you did not.
Yes, and this case is between American parties, under American law, in the U.S. (of America) District Court for the Northern District of California.
My boss could fire me for disliking the color of my T-Shirt this morning.
Every decision to choose one course of action over another is "discrimination-based"; you mean as long as it is not discrimination on an expressly-prohibited basis.
This is an American case, and it's being litigated in accordance with American law, so the judge is using American rules about employment to achieve the goal here. I would be surprised if there weren't some way to accomplish the same goal in Germany.
Regarding discovery, I must say that the US system is actually more advanced than Germany, where, in civil law, there isn't really a doctrine for recovering incriminating evidence (or otherwise compelling evidence) from the opposite side, apart from a few specific circumstances.
> And you also have the authority to say, "And if you don't do that, you're fired."
Basically, if the employee refuses and the company fires the employee, the company can shield itself from liability by cutting ties with the employee and telling the court that they had no idea what the employee was up to and didn't condone it at all.
"A person is guilty of arson when he or she willfully and maliciously sets fire to or burns or causes to be burned or who aids, counsels, or procures the burning of, any structure, forest land, or property." [1]
The incendiary's ownership or not of the property doesn't matter.
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....
For purposes of this paragraph, arson of property does
not include one burning or causing to be burned his or
her own personal property unless there is an intent to
defraud or there is injury to another person or another
person’s structure, forest land, or property.
From the transcript:
MR. GONZÁLEZ (Uber's lawyer): So, Your Honor, first of all, we have searched and we are in the process of searching all of our computers for the sorts of information that you referred to. And if we find those documents, we intend to produce those. In addition, Your Honor, we are searching Uber's computer that was assigned to all three of the people that are mentioned in the complaint. We are searching all of their individual Uber computers.
We're really here to talk about two things that are related. One is, anything that Mr. Levandowski may or may not have on his own -- let's just assume hypothetically that he's got something at home -- that is not something we have access to. And I just want to be forthright and tell you that. But the issue here is whether any of the stuff is at Uber. And we are searching for that.
THE COURT: Uber has the authority to say to its employees, "If you have anything at home you bring it in here, give it to Mr. González, and he will turn it over to the Court."
You have the authority to do that. And you also have the authority to say, "And if you don't do that, you're fired."
...
THE COURT: This is not a discovery thing. And if he doesn't testify to that at the deposition, well, I guess Uber -- you know, Uber is -- if you think this is going to help you, my preliminary view of it is it's not going to help you; and that if there's not a clear-cut path to showing that those 14,000 documents weren't used, then you're looking at a preliminary injunction.
On the other hand, maybe you can convince me that those 14,000 documents somehow none of them were used. Okay. That's a possibility. That has occurred to me that that's true. I just don't know. I don't know. But if Mr. Levandowski is unwilling to say -- hey, listen, I read in the newspaper that he said he did it so that he could do work at home. That's what I read in the newspaper. I don't know. So, look, if he's not willing to come clean, then that looks bad in a civil lawsuit. In a civil lawsuit.
Now, for criminal purposes, okay, maybe he's got the right to take the Fifth Amendment. But for civil purposes, there's a thing called adverse inferences.
MS. DUNN (Uber's other lawyer): I think one point we want to reinforce -- this actually sounds a lot like what Your Honor is saying -- is that if Your Honor is in the situation where he must draw an adverse inference against Mr. Levandowski, we would ask you to keep open the possibility in your mind that the adverse inference should not be drawn against Uber, which is a separate party. And it is our responsibility to come in and show to you that we have not used this and that we're differently situated.
So in that respect we agree.
THE COURT: Okay. I will say this: I'm not going to prejudge the issue without seeing what your record is. And it's conceivable, it's conceivable that that would fly. But it's also conceivable that I would draw the adverse inference against the employer who has the guy, who's taking the Fifth Amendment, who runs the company. To me that is a -- I don't know. I don't know what I would do.