Two former employees at BitTorrent – a file-sharing platform acquired by Tron two years ago – have filed a lawsuit against Tron founder Justin Sun and Tron Foundation, pursuing damages for alleged workplace harassment and violation of labor laws.
Plaintiffs Sue Justin Sun, Tron Foundation For $15 Million In Damages
Filed on October 28, the plaintiffs Richard Hall, 50 and Lukaszek Juraszek, 28 accuse Justin Sun and the head of engineering Cong Li of harassment, unfair dismissal, discrimination, hostility in the workplace among other claims. Hall worked for seven months until June as a product director at BitTorrent and Tron Foundation whilst Juraszek was a software engineer from February to August of 2019. The pair is now seeking $15 million in damages and government intervention for the violation of their rights.
According to the lawsuit, the Tron CEO went as far as using abusive language to intimidate Hall into speeding up the release of BitTorrent software. At another time, Juraszek noted that Sun slapped Li and was not held accountable for such an egregious act. Additionally, Li physically abused a manager who he was also verbally assaulting constantly.
The plaintiffs subsequently claimed that they had voiced concerns about the risk of BitTorrent being used by bad actors to host pirated content and child pornography, but these concerns had been dismissed. Moreover, their suggestion to retain attorneys for legal review of BitTorrent updates fell on deaf ears.
Hall and Juaszek were replaced with two recruits from mainland China who according to the lawsuit, appeared willing to follow Sun’s 9 A.M to 9 P.M, 6 days a week work schedule. They also appeared to be less adhering to American laws, therefore they would have no issue brushing off unlawful and unethical activities on the BitTorrent platform.
Sun, Li Call Plaintiff’s Bluff
Tron Foundation, Sun and Li and BitTorrent issued a response in mid-December. At that time, they denied all allegations of harassment and discrimination, stating that all their deeds had been within the bounds of law and were conducted in good faith.
A spokesperson of the defendants had affirmed:
“TRON is not able to speak on the details of pending litigation, but what we can tell you is that our customers, employees and the TRON community are extremely important to us.”
While legal experts in the crypto community might be able to tell the legal ramifications of this lawsuit, the rest of us will have to wait and see how the case unfolds. Meanwhile, TRX is trading at $0.017189 which is a far cry from its peak in January 2018.
