Tan, whom he refused to say if he personally supports Tiktok’s ban, believes that the central question is the application. “There is a federal law that says that the Tiktok app should not be in your shop and I can see that Tiktok is on the App Store,” says Google. “The congress approved the law and the Supreme Court confirmed it. It is not questionable.”
In his opinion, Google is openly ignoring the law and wants to understand the legal basis for that decision, as well as the measure in which shareholders should be worried about Google’s potential responsibility. “I heard that I should have joined someone who are doing something,” says Tan.
Books and records
Tan has a history of use of requests and disputes to investigate and fight what it considers injustice. In 2019, Has caused A New Hampshire hotel for alleged violation of anti-discrimination laws excluding reservations from adults under the age of 21. Tan says he dropped the case after the hotel has changed his policy.
This February, Tan presented a request for public registers at the United States Department of Justice in search of copies of letters that the attorney general Pam Bondi sent to companies such as Google and Apple who advised them that they would not have been held responsible for continuing to distribute Tiktok. After the prosecutor general office said he had no record corresponding to Tan’s request, he brought the Department of Justice to Court. (The New York Times has filed A similar case.) In a deposit of the Court, the Department of Justice has denied any offense.
In March, Tan requested minutes and materials from the meetings of the Alphabet Board of Directors relating to the prohibition of Tiktok, including the same reported letter of the general prosecutor. Tan made his request pursuant to a law in Delaware, in which the alphabet is incorporated, which allows shareholders who act in “good faith” to inspect “books and registers” when suspicious of bad management investigate. Through a series of exchanges between Alphabet’s lawyers and his, Tan learned that the company owned about half a dozen relevant documents, but that he would not have delivered them if he would not have ordered it by a court.
“The minutes of the Board of Directors will show whether or not the Board has discussed the risks associated with making the Tiktok application available through Google Play and, in this case, if and as how
They evaluated the risk of responsibility “, the cause of Tan presented Tuesday says.” The minutes of the Council will show even if the Council has taken into consideration whether to make Tiktok available through Google Play was a positive violation of the federal law “.
Companies that Viola the ban on Tiktok Continuing to distribute the app, it can face penalties up to $ 5,000 per user. The cause of Tan claims that Google should not rely on the executive order of Trump and Bondi’s letter alone to protect them from legal risks and that the technology giant could be held responsible by a future president or even Trump, who is known to change his mind often.
Gavril, the lawyer who represents Google, supported in an exchange with lawyers who represent so that “many planets should have aligned themselves for that hypothetical damage to become reality. Some would support that a worried shareholder should wait for real damage before progressing to investigate how it became”.