A former Tesla engineer has spoken out amid an ongoing legal case against Elon Musk, claiming her entire team was threatened with deportation.
Cristina Balan worked for Tesla on the Model S however, in 2014, it’s reported she flagged a potential safety issue with the brake safety to founder of the company Elon Musk himself.
In 2013, Musk had sent out an email to all Tesla employees reassuring them ‘anyone’ at the company ‘should’ talk to ‘anyone without anyone else’s permission’ and ‘should consider [themselves] obligated to do so until the right thing happens’.
However, when Balan did highlight the issue to Musk in an email, and was given a meeting with him, she was allegedly met by a lawyer.
Balan claims she was told by Tesla she must resign from her position and Tesla’s lawyer also threatened to deport members of her team if she didn’t.
She ultimately signed the resignation letter, writing, as quoted by Electrek: “I’m resigning for the position that I was put in a month ago bc I dare to speak up to the Sr management, also bc people that had the chance to speak up were threatened…”
The Huffington Post later published a story about Balan ,and a Tesla spokesperson commented alleging Balan had engaged in criminal activity, accusing her of recording meetings with supervisors in secret.
Balan accused Tesla of defamation – given the spokesperson did not provide evidence publicly to back up the claims – however, Tesla lawyers then appealed to the 9th Circuit and got her case into arbitration.
Tesla’s employee agreement gets future employees to sign and subsequently agree to ‘arbitration as the exclusive method for economically and efficiently resolving any and all disputes and claims between’ it and the employee.
Arbitration is an alternative to going to court where both sides’ arguments are heard by a neutral third party, known as an arbiter.
It was ruled Balan wouldn’t be able to make her case in open court, and the defamation suit was ultimately thrown out, the LA Times reported.
However, Balan didn’t just admit defeat, appealing the decision.
And on April 14, it was revealed she’s succeeded in getting the arbitration thrown out.
Balan now hopes to present her case and face Tesla in open court.
In an interview with The Times UK, she said she looks forward to ‘prove how vindictive this monster is’ – speaking about Musk.
She branded the CEO ‘pure evil,’ claiming ‘he’s enjoying hurting people… and you don’t know about them because he’s forcing everybody to give up their freedom of speech and their right to sue’.
In an interview with the BBC she added she ‘wish[es] Elon Musk had the decency to apologise’ and ultimately just hopes to ‘clear [her] name’.
