On March 29, 2023, CrossnoKaye filed a 120-page petition for restraining order against me, listing this blog as the primary evidence and citing fears for their safety and "safety of their investors and clients". At the preliminary hearing on April 24, 2023, I requested the case to be presided by a Judge, and the request was granted. On May 10, 2023, at the California Superior Court of Santa Barbara, the hearing was held on the matter of the restraining order for the case of "CrossnoKaye vs. Davor Magdic".
The company lawyers (they had two; I represented myself) won the stay for the "classic" part of the restraining order -- the main part of which is the prohibition from me being within 100 yards of the company offices and four of its employees (three of which are executives), which I have neither attempted nor have had any interest in whatsoever since I left, but for which they argued using this blog, parts of messages taken out of context, and the Glassdoor review. The gag order the company requested was denied: the Court upheld my right to tell investors and clients about the company's practices.
The Company had requested that I be ordered to not "Contact the clients or investors of CrossnoKaye, Inc., either directly or indirectly, by any means, including, but not limited to, in person, in writing, by public or private mail, by interoffice mail, by text message, by fax, or by other electronic means." In the supporting material, the Company tried to justify this request by alleging fears for the safety of their investors and clients without providing any evidence to support such concerns. Furthermore, the nature of the restraining order petition requires that those investors and clients who are to be protected are listed by their names; not only did the Company not provide the names, it would have been impossible to do so (Lineage Logistics alone has an estimated 17,000 employees).
Yet the Commissioner who approved the Temporary order, while not granting the gag order, wrote that "the issue of communication with investors and clients will be addressed at the hearing", despite the lack of grounds for considering such a ban on communication. The only piece of communication with investors and clients the Company provided was my up to that point the only letter to the investors, which contradicted their claims as the letter was respectful, mindful of the sensitivity of the issue, and even suggested promoting one of the persons for whom the Company sought protection; the Company presumably included it to support the claim of an "escalating" pattern of communication. They did not include copies of my correspondence with the client, whether it was available to them or not, and which was equally respectful.
Not being able to go near the Company offices or the employees had no impact on me as I had no interest nor have ever made any attempt to do so since I left, but the gag order attempt was a direct attack on my First Amendment rights. It was broad enough that, had it been granted, it could and probably would have been used to try to shut down this blog. For those reasons, after I submitted my written response, at the preliminary hearing with the Commissioner I requested the the case be heard by a Judge, and the request was granted.
On April 27, 2024, three days after the preliminary hearing, I sent an email to a CrossnoKaye investor to invite him to attend the hearing on May 10 and see for himself what the Company is doing. This investor has in the past emphasized the importance of building not just startups, but startups that are a valuable part of the community. One of the employees I spoke to expressed that, after Crossno Kaye, she felt that "this entire startup scene is a lie."
At the hearing, where the Judge confirmed that he had read my written response in full, the Company did not even try to argue in favor of the gag order; and while in their petition they tried to establish that I am disgruntled by claiming they terminated me -- despite citing the name of my blog, "How I Quit My Job At CrossnoKaye", numerous times in the petition -- now that the full correspondence following my resignation was revealed to the Court, they referred to my departure only as me being "separated" from the Company.
The Company also argued that the blog paragraph, "If everyone is respectful and I disagree with the company direction, I wish them good luck and leave. But if someone in a position of power tries to disrespect me repeatedly and the management allows it, I don't leave" means I am saying I refused to leave the company. This, in my opinion, makes no sense on multiple levels, and neither does the premise that someone who makes a considerable effort to call to public attention the actions of a company and his own would threaten someone's safety -- in the same way that a company allegedly concerned for the safety of four employees would shift focus towards asking for a complete ban on contact with all of its clients and investors.
Regardless, the Court decided as it did, and I respect its decision.
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The case can be found at https://portal.sbcourts.org/CASBPORTAL, case number "23CV01355".
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This is the email I sent to the investor on April 27, 2023:
Dear Mr. Duca,
I am a former CrossnoKaye software engineer and a shareholder who reached out to IGSB last year, via your former colleague Mr. **** ****, to notify IGSB of ethics and safety concerns in CrossnoKaye.
I am writing to let you know that on April 4th this year CrossnoKaye filed a petition with the Santa Barbara Court for a “workplace violence” restraining order against me in what is clearly an attempt at legal intimidation. Alleging fears for the safety of "employees, investors, and clients", CrossnoKaye requested protection for four employees (three executives and a non-executive), and the company also requested a complete ban on contact of any kind with investors and clients. The first request, as is often the case, was temporarily granted; the second was not. That this second request was denied by the Court upholds my right to tell you about this petition, and that the request was made in the first place indicates CrossnoKaye may not want you to know about it.
To support groundless claims of a credible threat of violence, the Petitioner goes as far as to cite a literary quote that opens my blog "How I Quit My Job At CrossnoKaye" as a reason to fear for the safety of not just the four employees but the "investors and clients with whom I share those workspaces" as one declaration states, heinously implying that I might carry out an act of violence at the company premises and implausibly using this alleged concern to justify asking for a gag order on communicating “directly or indirectly” with tens of thousands of people across the country who count among the company investors and clients. To establish an "escalating pattern" of threats the company even claims in its filing that the quote was added recently, which evidence proves is both false and known to the company to be false. I have provided a detailed response to the Petitioner and the Court, and, at the hearing last Monday, April 24, I requested that the case is heard not by the Commissioner, who partly approved the temporary restraining order, but by a Judge. The request was granted, and the hearing was rescheduled for May 10.
I invite you to attend the hearing if you are at all available to do so. The hearing will take place in the Superior Court of California, county of Santa Barbara, Department 3, on May 10 at 1:30pm and will be presided by Judge Thomas P. Anderle. My party overheard CrossnoKaye’s two attorneys that they would ask that the hearing be confidential, but I assume you will be granted access if you choose to attend.
If you need any information from me, please feel welcome to reach out on email or phone at any time.
I did not receive a response, and the investor was not present at the hearing.
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At the preliminary hearing, after I apparently surprised everyone by requesting a hearing by the Judge, the Company party (all six of them) and me and my party (my girlfriend who came to testify that a claim in their evidence was false, and made false knowingly) left the courtroom. My girlfriend and I went back to my car, where I realized I forgot my laptop bag in the courtroom so we went back. Arriving back to the court building some 5 minutes later, we saw the Company party standing outside and huddled in an intense conversation. Clearly they did not expect to see us. We got inside and through security, collected my laptop bag from the courtroom where different case was being heard, and exited the building. By then the Company party had left, but as we went back towards the car, we saw them at the nearest street corner, still very animated. We went around the block to not infringe on the temporary order. 10 minutes later, we observed them from a safe distance, still standing there and discussing. It appeared that the randomly assigned Judge Anderle, known for his conservative views towards freedom of speech, was not favorable to their cause.
The obvious question was why the matter required so much legal firepower and concern. One look at the form for Restraining Order for "workplace violence" -- I had the opportunity to research the matter while writing a response -- makes it obvious that the form was meant to be filed without an attorney, to quickly give the police a green light to stop a crazy person from causing harm, and is almost always filed the next day after an alarming event, not weeks and months after. It is also far more common that the Respondent -- the person against whom the restraining order is sought -- needs an attorney, not the Petitioner. CrossnoKaye brought on two.
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I will post here the relevant documents from the hearing once I determine what can be published without breaking compliance with the order.
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