When Elon Musk Tried to

Destroy a Tesla Whistleblower

Bloomberg Businessweek | Article by Matt Robinson and Zeke Faux
KEY LEARNING POINTS
• Understand the elements of a defamation claim, including the exception for
public figures

• Describe Tesla's use of private investigators and company employees to

respond to whistleblower allegations.
The story goes like this…….

 June 4 2018- Business Insider reported that Tesla Inc. was scrapping or reworking 40 percent
of the raw materials at the Gigafactory

 Tesla denied

 Musk – investigators

 Found to be Martin Tripp

 “extensive and damaging sabotage”

..contd

 Tripp could be coordinating with one of Tesla’s many enemies—oil companies,

rival automakers, or Wall Street short sellers

 On June 20, the company sued Tripp for $167 million

 Tripp was planning a mass shooting at the Gigafactory

 Police said he was innocent and harmless

…contd

 Musk sought to destroy him

 Spread rumors

 Began a social media meltdown

 Appointed a twitter-sitter
…contd

 Sean Gouthro- who was fired

 Tesla’s spokeswoman- “Gouthro’s argument untrue”

 Also Uber Technologies

 Scrambled to hire staff to speed up manufacture of Mode 3

Sedan

 Tripp claimed to calm this chaos

 Complained to superior-’yeah whatever’

..contd

 Gouthro says that if Tripp was ignored

 had been filled with workers so quickly that it was almost impossible to control.

 he discovered that many employees, some of whom were living out of their car
in the corners of the industrial park, were using cocaine and meth

 Gouthro says the scanners guards used to check badges were unreliable

 Local scrap yards called him to report thieves were trying to sell obscure electric
vehicle parts.
..contd

 To bring order

 worked at Facebook Inc. in an operations center that responded to

dangerous situations spotted on live videos.

 Gouthro says Facebook’s was a far more professional environment

than Tesla’s.

 a company lawyer told him that the previous head of security at

the Gigafactory, Andrew Ceroni, had left after a bitter dispute
…contd

 While Gouthro tried to address drugs, and raucous disorganization, Tripp

decided to go public.

 Tripp had access to Tesla’s internal production database and dug into it to
figure out just how much material was being wasted.

 Met Lopez
…contd

 When Tripp arrived at work on June 14, he was met by a human resources
representative
 who escorted him to a conference room. When he got there, Gicinto and
Nocon were waiting.
 the conversation started on friendly terms, with the two interrogators asking
Tripp about reports he’d made to his bosses. “This to me is a major safety, a
public safety concern,” Tripp said, patiently explaining the punctured
battery cells he’d seen. They mentioned the Business Insider story
repeatedly without asking Tripp if he was the source.