TRON’s Arbitration Can Be Moved To A Court Of Law: Report

TRON’s arbitration that was initiated after two employees were fired from the Foundation last year, filed a writ of mandamus with the First District Court of Appeal In California. The court then decided that the lawsuit can be settled in arbitration but it seems that the arbitration is now facing challenges. In our Tron TRX news, we take a closer look at the new developments.

Richard Hall and Lukasz Juraszek were fired last year from the Tron Foundation and they wanted to reverse arbitration in a lawsuit for wrongful termination and hostile work practices at BitTorrent, the file-sharing service that was acquired in 2018 by the Tron Foundation. The court approved that the Tron Foundation and BitTorrent can settle the lawsuit in arbitration back in March. Parties to the lawsuits didn’t respond to request for comments yet.

Unlike an appeal, where the judgment on a civil or criminal case outcome is rendered after a few years, a writ of mandamus decides in a few months whether the court fulfilled or violated its obligations. The writ of mandamus said that Tron and BitTorrent submitted inadmissible documents that support an arbitration agreement that contains illegal contractual terms. According to the writ of mandamus, the San Francisco Superior Court said that the arbitration was unconscionable to favor the employers but sided with Tron anyway.

The Superior Court ruled the arbitration agreement was valid and the employees took the initiative to sign the paperwork. Hall and Juraszek responded to the motion to compel arbitration by claiming they didn’t read or were not permitted to negotiate the agreement. The lawsuit alleged that Justin Sun, the founder of Tron and head of engineering Cong Li, assaulted personnel in the company and favored Chinese employees, harassing Hall and Juraszek for alerting the company to pirated content and child pornography on the BitTorrent programs. The retaliation campaign involved Li and Sun who demoted and fired Hall and Juraszek who both had above-average scores on performance reviews.

Both of the employees filed the lawsuit in October and reported BitTorrent and Tron Foundation to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing that handles discrimination and harassment. The agency gave Hall and Juraszek permission to file the lawsuit and to move their complaints in a court of law.