Last week Frederic Lambert, a prolific Redditor and member of the investing site InvestorHub, revealed that he was the target of litigation from troubled tuner Saleen for some online posts he made questioning the company’s viability as a business. Today, Saleen says that case has been settled.
Lambert said he started looking into Saleen as a small-time Tesla investor when the company announced they’d be tuning a Model S. His posts accused the company — whose financial troubles are well-documented at this point — of being a “scam” and of engaging in Ponzi scheme-like behavior by using customer deposit money to fund operations. Lambert also accused founder Steve Saleen of “living off shareholders.” The accuracy of Lambert’s claims aren’t immediately clear.
Lambert was then accused of defamation and libel and sued in his native Quebec. That case has apparently come to an end today. Saleen announced they were settling the case with Lambert agreeing to take down his posts and not to make any more defamatory comments against Saleen, “among other things” which were not specified.
We’ve reached out to Lambert to see if he’ll comment on the matter, but for now it appears the case is done.
Here’s the full statement Saleen sent us:
On July 20, 2015, Mr. Steve Saleen and Saleen Automotive, Inc., filed a Motion to Institute Proceedings for Interlocutory and Permanent Injunction against Mr. Frederic Lambert before the Superior Court of Quebec. These proceedings are predicated on defamatory comments made by Mr. Lambert on various platforms and media outlets over the course of the last 15 months.
Following the filing of such proceedings, Mr. Saleen, Saleen Automotive, Inc., on one part, and Mr. Lambert, on the other part, agreed to resolve this matter.
In order to avoid litigation, Mr. Lambert has, among other things, agreed that an order be granted against him preventing him from releasing any additional defamatory comments against Mr. Saleen and Saleen Automotive, Inc. and to withdraw all previous defamatory comments from the relevant websites.
All the parties are pleased with this resolution of their dispute. This will be the only public statement made in connection with the said dispute by either party.
Contact the author at patrick@jalopnik.com.