Tesla Motors and its chief executive asked the Northern District of California for an order confirming their victory in a Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services (JAMS) decision rendered last month. Cristina Balan, a former Tesla engineer, originally sued in federal court in Seattle, Washington in January 2019 claiming that the company baselessly spoke out against her after she raised alarms about safety concerns and the electric car maker’s business practices.
Balan’s reportedly successful career at Tesla, including her “critical work” on its electric car batteries, ended in 2014 and was followed by an employment arbitration. The complaint claims that the allegedly defamatory statements were made by Tesla during the pendency of that adversarial proceeding in the form of comments posted to an online story written about Balan by The Huffington Post.
In the company’s September 2017 comments, a Tesla spokesperson allegedly accused Balan of engaging in criminal conduct, including theft of company property and using its resources without management approval. Balan pushed Tesla to remove the comments, citing a complete lack of evidence, but the company reportedly refused. Eventually, The Huffington Post removed them when asked by an advocate for the plaintiff, the complaint said.
Balan’s defamation litigation was partially shunted to arbitration after the judge said that some, but not all of her claims had to be heard in the para-judicial forum pursuant to the arbitration...
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