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Tag: class members

  • Tesla wins bid to decertify class action lawsuit alleging racial discrimination

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    Tesla has secured a ruling to strip a claiming a racist work environment of its class-action status, as reported by . California Superior Court Judge Peter Borkon, appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021, ruled that the lawsuit could not proceed with class-action status because the plaintiffs’ attorneys had failed to find 200 class members willing to testify. The judge said he could not assume that the experiences of a select group of workers could be applied to the entire class of would-be plaintiffs.

    The 2017 lawsuit began with a single employee who filed suit alleging Tesla’s Fremont production floor was a “hotbed for racist behavior,” and that over 100 employees had experienced racial harassment.

    In 2024, a lower court judge ruled the case could move forward as a class action, a decision that Tesla had been appealing since. A trial in the case was scheduled to begin in April, though now that the case has lost its class-action status, each plaintiff would have to bring their case against Tesla separately.

    This is not the first time that Tesla has found itself in court over alleged racial misconduct. In 2023, the automaker by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over allegations that Black employees were subjected to racial slurs and retaliation.

    Last year, Tesla with a single employee who said he faced discrimination at the same California plant, reporting that his coworkers left drawings of swastikas and racist figures on his workspace.

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    Andre Revilla

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  • Judge rejects Anthropic’s record-breaking $1.5 billion settlement for AI copyright lawsuit

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    Judge William Alsup has rejected the record-breaking $1.5 billion settlement Anthropic has agreed to for a piracy lawsuit filed by writers. According to Bloomberg Law, the federal judge is concerned that the class lawyers struck a deal that will be forced “down the throat of authors.” Alsup reportedly felt misled by the deal and said it was “nowhere close to complete.” In his order, he said he was “disappointed that counsel have left important questions to be answered in the future,” including the list of works involved in the case, the list of authors, the process of notifying members of the class and the claim form class members can use to get their part of the settlement.

    If you’ll recall, the plaintiffs sued Anthropic over the company’s use of pirated copies of their works to train its large language models. Around 500,000 authors are involved in the lawsuit, and they’re expected to receive $3,000 per work. “This landmark settlement far surpasses any other known copyright recovery,” one of the lawyers representing the authors said in a statement. However, Alsup had an “uneasy feeling about hangers on with all [that] money on the table.” He explained that class members “get the shaft” in a lot of class actions once the monetary settlement has been established and lawyers stopped caring.

    Alsup told the lawyers that they must give the class members “very good notice” about the settlement and design a claim form that gives them the choice to opt in or out. They also have to ensure that Anthropic cannot be sued for the same issue in the future. The judge gave the lawyers until September 15 to submit a final list of works involved in the lawsuit. He also wrote in his order that the works list, class members list and the claim form all have to be examined and approved by the court by October 10 before he grants the settlement his preliminary approval.

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    Mariella Moon

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