Re:No "malfeasance" behind Sam Altman's firing, OpenAI memo ...
by peyton on Saturday November 18, 2023 @08:45PM
(#38327425)
I don’t follow. You’re saying PPUs granted by the for-profit don’t carry a reasonably expected benefit? And that a parent can’t tortuously interfere with a subsidiary? Both are factually untrue. I don’t see the wiggle room here that you do.
Re:No "malfeasance" behind Sam Altman's firing, OpenAI memo ...
by dragonwriter on Saturday November 18, 2023 @09:01PM
(#38327578)
> I don’t follow. You’re saying PPUs granted by the for-profit don’t carry a reasonably expected benefit?
Yes, a profit sharing claim in an LLC whose operating agreement explicitly says it will be operated for the charitable purpose of a controlling nonprofit and that profit will not be its guiding principle does not create a reasonable expectation that it will be managed for profit.
Either the employees have that information disclosed, and there is no expectation, or it is concealed by the subsidiary employing them, in which case there might be a reasonable expectation, but its due to fraud by the subsidiary, not interference by the parent.
And you can't make that case with the later decision by the nonprofit board (even if one assumes that an entity that has complete control of a party can even count as a "third party" for tortious interference rather than just being a source of breach of contract if it actually induces a breach), because the OpenAI Global LLC operating agreement expressly sets this out as normal, so there is no reasonable expected benefit of the relationship that is being interfered with.
If OpenAI Global LLC offered its employees the PIU/PPU as compensation but did not disclose (or, a fortiori, actively concealed), you could make a case for fairly simple fraud. But tortious interference is just not a tort that works here.