Martin Eberhard,  co-founder of  Tesla Motors, the  makers of high-performance electric sports cars, is suing the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, citing allegations of slander, libel and breach of contract.

Eberhard’s lawsuit was filed on May 26th in San Mateo County, California Superior Court and seeks unspecified damages.

“Tesla Motors Inc. co-founder Martin Eberhard sued the company and Chief Executive Elon Musk, claiming Musk engineered his ouster and defamed him to take credit as the electric roadster’s creator.

Eberhard alleges that Musk began a campaign to take control of the electric-car start-up when he invested in the closely held company and joined its board in 2004.”

Eberhard claims that Musk falsely said that he was the founder of the company, and also lied about the extent of his involvement in the company, PayPal.

“Musk pushed Eberhard out three years later and sought to take credit for the idea behind the San Carlos, Calif., company by defaming Eberhard in media interviews and to Tesla workers and other investors”

“Eberhard contends he is owed severance pay and stock options. He also claims he was promised the second roadster off Tesla’s production line, which was finally delivered to him only after it had been smashed into the back of a truck by a Tesla Motors employee during a so-called endurance test, according to the complaint.”

Tesla is planning to counter sue Eberhard, it is unclear how much Eberhard is seeking in damages.

“Daimler recently tool a 10% (or $50 million) stake in Tesla, putting the company’s valuation at $500 million.”

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Nasty blogging is the wave of the future! Unfortunately, anyone can write almost anything online and not even acknowledge who they are. Therefore, you can get slammed and once any kind of slander hits the Web, it’s floating around in cyber space for life. The question is: Can you do anything about it?

According to The National Law Journal’s Joel Cohen & Katherine A. Helm, “47 U.S.C. 230(c) confers broad protection for both the blocking and screening of offensive material. As interpreted, it basically gives blanket immunity to blog owners for most speech by third parties, whether prescreened, automatically posted or later removed.

“The “Zeran rule” is that the blog author/owner cannot, except in very limited circumstances, be held liable if an anonymous commentator posts the harmful information. This holds true whether the owner is an individual running a blog in his basement, or the New York Times Co. outfitting its online edition with blogs or article comments.”

Therefore, while an actual blogger can be held responsible, the publication is liable-free. The blogger’s bashing may be ordered to get taken down, but let’s keep it real…once material online has been out there for a while, it can pop up like magic, regardless of the material’s removal.

Basically, the law hasn’t caught up to the web regarding slander, yet. The only real defense is to take the “cyber law” into your own hands. What does that mean exactly? Slander back…or threaten a retaliation. Words can be brutal and when it comes to the worldwide Web, no one should throw stones from glass houses.

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