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Lawsuit against CTO (from https://www.law.com/radar/card/eshares-inc-v-talton-iii-4732...):

    eShares Inc. d/b/a Carta Inc. filed a breach-of-contract and trade secrets lawsuit against former CTO Jerry O. Talton III on Friday in New York Southern District Court. The suit, brought by Dechert, accuses the defendant of leaking private, privileged and confidential info to outside parties in order to induce and assist legal claims against the company. Counsel have not yet appeared for the defendant. The case is 1:22-cv-10987, eShares Inc. v. Talton.
> leaking private, privileged and confidential info to outside parties in order to induce and assist legal claims against the company

In other words, he told about something potentially illegal, but secret, and now is sued.

Sounds somewhat similar to whistleblowing. Why this could be illegal?

The complaint sounds a lot worse than that!

> Unbeknownst to Carta, Talton repeatedly abused his position of trust and confidence as CTO to secretly record multiple Carta executives, Board members and others in an attempt to harm Carta, including by feeding such information to former employees who were threatening to assert claims against Carta (and/or who were already litigating against Carta), and to circumvent and undermine the very information technology infrastructure and security systems he was charged with safeguarding in order to conceal his own illicit conduct.

From page 2, here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.59...

Sounds like a wonderful person:

> By way of example only, Talton sent or received messages that include the terms “jungle n***s” and “gross lesbians,” “butterfaces,” “rape,” “big rubber dog dick,” “pathetically obsessed pussy slave,” phrases such as “women don’t experience pain the way humans do,” “I’m never going to get to pin you down and fuck you again, am I...you know how hard I get when you humiliate me,” “now i have to jerk off before my meetings start” in addition to sending links containing explicit and misogynistic pornography.

So, all that stuff wasn't important and just kept going on, but it was the breach of confidentiality that got him fired and sued? This has me heavily headscratching here...
looking at the section preceding that it appears it was uncovered in the same forensic investigation. So according to the complaint both were discovered at the same time.
I worked in management at Carta while Jerry was CTO. It was one of the most disorganized and chaotic companies I've ever been at. Extremely unprofessional in many ways and a total waste of time.

I was in pillar update meetings with both the CTO and CEO. Jerry may actually be a shitty person, but you can bet those messages were deliberately released to paint him as a shitty person and discredit him prior to a countersuit. Nevertheless, Henry, the CEO, is a way shittier person.

This is mainly me airing my grievances, but take some advice: if you feel like your workplace is a toxic hellhole, it probably is. It's not your job to fix it, and you should move on physically and mentally.

Whether he’s a wonderful person isn’t and shouldn’t be up for debate in court. Did he break the law? Did he breach his contract? Unless every instance of it was relevant to their case, smut of the type used in the suit as “example only” was obviously chosen by the litigants with the intention to maximize embarrassment and damage to his reputation.
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Aside from the allegations: good. Carta is one of those apps that is so unusable and broken and somehow valuable it leaves me bewildered and depressed.

Not aside from the allegations: whoa, gross.

He became the bad guy after sending a letter to the board? Isn't it a tad fishy?
regardless of what happened, I think given the publicity, I don't think any company will ever hire him again. Hopefully he got enough shares from Carta to retire.