Tesla wins defamation counterclaim against Gigafactory whistleblower Tesla has successfully torpedoed a countersuit brought against it by a former employee accused of stealing confidential internal info from the luxury electric carmaker. Nevada US District Court Judge Miranda Du on Thursday granted a summary judgment [PDF] in favor of Tesla, dismissing counterclaims from ex-technician Martin …
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Ifs easy to forget that prior to Tesla sorting out its production problems resulting in the current lofty (unrealistic/fantastic/overblown -- you name it) stock valuation Tesla stock was a favorite for short sellers. There was a lot of big money shorting this stock so any news -- real, speculative or just plain fabricated -- was welcome news to these sellers. Tesla jumped on this kind of whistleblower because its the sort of thing that could snowball.
The story behind the story is that currently corporate performance is reported solely in terms of how it affects that company's stock price. This is a logical outcome from the wholesale adoption of Milton Freidman's theory that the one and only purpose of corporate management was to "deliver maximum value to shareholders" -- the stock price is all that matters. This might not be important if your corporation is an effective monopoly, you control the message as well as the product (until things really start to go South like airliners start crashing**) but if you're trying to develop new product like Tesla the stock market will kill you if it thinks its the quick way to make the money.
(**Before the 737MAX debacle the business press in the US was fed a steady diet of stores about how new generation aircraft like the MAX were crusing the opposition (i.e. Airbus), how the 380 was symbolic of Airbus's failure and so on.)
Ifs easy to forget that prior to Tesla sorting out its production problems resulting in the current lofty (unrealistic/fantastic/overblown -- you name it) stock valuation Tesla stock was a favorite for short sellers. There was a lot of big money shorting this stock so any news -- real, speculative or just plain fabricated -- was welcome news to these sellers. Tesla jumped on this kind of whistleblower because its the sort of thing that could snowball.
Tesla hasn't really sorted out it's production problems, and it's possible it's now created overproduction problems, ie it can produce more than it can sell. And it's insane stock valuation is a sign of an irrational market, possibly helped by the stock split and retail traders using their stimulus checks to gamble. But shorting has always been a 'problem' for Tesla, and carelessness like Musk's pedo guy comments could have been equally damaging.. Along with other tweets that he was going to take the company private.. But that's unlikely now given Musk's bonus plan.
The whistleblowing's interesting because that's really intended to expose wrongdoing, and AFAIK the claims weren't falsified. And there's been plenty of other stories about production/build quality/financial issues.
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