Uber accuses Levandowski of fraud, refuses to pay $179M Google judgment

Enlarge / Anthony Levandowski leaves court in September 2019. (credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Uber says it shouldn't be on the hook for a massive $179 million judgment owed to Google by Uber's former star engineer, Anthony Levandowski. Uber made that argument in a legal filing last week to a federal bankruptcy court in California. Uber's brief portrays the situation differently than Levandowski, who told the court last month that Uber was legally obligated to pay the award.

Levandowski joined Uber in 2016 after almost a decade at Google, where he had been a leading self-driving engineer. Uber bought Levandowski's months-old self-driving startup Otto for hundreds of millions of dollars, intending to make Levandowski and his team the core of Uber's fledgling self-driving car project.

But things went sour fast. Google sued Uber, alleging that Levandowski had downloaded thousands of confidential documents before his departure and had taken them to his new job. Fearing criminal prosecution for trade secret theft-fears that proved justified-Levandowski invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify during the civil trial between Google and Uber.

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