Billionaire Bill Ackman tells a long story about his family’s company to announce that he will not settle a frivolous harassment case against his company.
Bill Ackman published a multi-thousand-word post on
The post, which looks almost like a novel, has gone viral as several notable figures like Elon Musk, Chamath Palihapitiya, and Donald Trump Jr. have reacted. With his stories, they supported Akman’s position in fighting him. Long story short: At the heart of this lawsuit is his family’s private office, TABLE, which was founded 15 years ago to handle his personal finances. The company grew and expenses ballooned while he was busy with his other companies.
Late last year, he brought in his nephew, a Harvard graduate, to look at the company. The nephew spoke to the employees and suggested laying off a third of the employees, including the president.
The company’s in-house lawyer and one of its highest-paid employees, whom Ackman called “Rhonda” for ease of understanding, demanded that he be fired for two years, then sent a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley lawyer alleging an unsafe workplace, harassment and gender discrimination by the nephew.
Ackman said he spoke to his nephew and found that those comments were taken out of context and that Rhonda herself was the head of workplace compliance. According to Ackman, Rhonda and her husband, who works at a prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm, calculated that they would get a huge sum of money from Ackman because Rhonda knew all the pressing situations Ackman was facing — his daughter’s brain hemorrhage on February 5, his IPO and so on.
Ackman said he would not seek a settlement and would instead fight it. “I agree,” Elon Musk replied. “This has gone too far.” Donald Trump Jr. also said he agrees with Ackman’s decision and it must stop. Chamath Palihapitiya said he learned the hard way after settling the frivolous claims earlier. “I’ve dealt with a bunch of this crap in the past. It’s the ‘tax’ I talked about in the pod this week. It was easier to pay for a while because it was relatively small each time (a few million here or there) but then the system realizes I’m a tick and won’t stop.”
When they try to go after dozens or hundreds. I finally got fed up with it and drew a hard line in the sand with a bunch of people who sued me for profits they didn’t deserve.
They lost. I won. I will never settle down again. “Only fighting,” he wrote. The majority of social media users enjoyed reading how a billionaire threw his “nephew” under the bus and shamed the employee who sued him.
