Mr Viral
Four employees have sued Rivian in separate lawsuits this year over allegations they were harassed, in some cases by top executives, and that the company’s leadership did little to address their concerns, according to a TechCrunch review of court records.
Rivian has also reached settlements in three other harassment and discrimination cases, TechCrunch has learned.
Lawsuits aren’t uncommon in the automotive industry, particularly with large companies that operate factories and multiple facilities. But the allegations contained in these previously unreported lawsuits against Rivian, and the ones that it has settled, suggest the company is still sorting out its internal culture – a culture that was thrust into the spotlight three years ago when it went public.
Two of the lawsuits, filed in California’s Orange County Superior Court, center around Rivian chief designer Jeff Hammoud, who has been with the company since 2017.
One filed by former color, material, and finish team director Elizabeth Curran in February 2024 accuses Hammoud of being “prone to irrational outbursts of anger,” incidents she describes as being “often directed at the women in leadership.”
The other, filed by sculptor Nathan Facciolla in October 2024, alleges Hammoud created a hostile work environment and called Facciolla’s wife “a hooker” because she worked a night shift at a hospital.
Both employees claim they reported Hammoud to HR and that he was not disciplined.
A lawyer for Hammoud declined to comment.
A third lawsuit, filed in federal court last month by line worker Jeremiah Powe, accuses recently-departed chief operating officer Frank Klein of assault and battery after he allegedly pulled Powe to the ground for violating the company’s dress code. Powe told local law enforcement that he believed Rivian didn’t properly investigate the alleged incident, according to a police report obtained by TechCrunch.
Lawyers for Powe declined to comment. Klein declined to comment and directed TechCrunch’s questions to Rivian.
Rivian was also sued by a production worker at its Normal, Illinois factory in February 2024. Nicole Hawkins filed a lawsuit in the Eleventh Judicial Court in McLean County, Illinois claiming she was physically harassed and threatened by a coworker. When she reported this to Rivian’s human resources department, she claims “[n]othing was done.” The case is potentially being settled, as the docket now shows Hawkins’ attorney is asking for a dismissal. Her attorney declined to comment.
Rivian declined to comment on the claims made by each employee, citing the fact that the lawsuits are ongoing.
“Rivian is committed to providing an outstanding workplace free of harassment, discrimination and retaliation,” Marina Hoffmann, Rivian’s VP of global communications, said in an emailed statement. “As with any organization with thousands of employees, situations do arise that prompt us to take action. When we become aware of conduct that may violate our corporate policies or the law, we investigate thoroughly and take appropriate action.”
These lawsuits come just a few years after Rivian’s former head of sales and marketing Laura Schwab put company’s culture under scrutiny when she sued the company over her own allegations of sexual discrimination and wrongful termination.
Schwab claimed in her 2021 lawsuit that founder and CEO R.J. Scaringe had “surrounded himself with a tight knit group of men” who created a “toxic bro culture” that resulted in “blatant marginalization” of women. She said she was fired two days after she brought her experience to HR.
Schwab’s lawsuit and her blog post about the company’s culture garnered a lot of attention ahead of Rivian’s blockbuster IPO in 2021. But she quietly settled with the company six months later and dismissed the lawsuit, court records show. Her lawyer declined to comment on the settlement.
Oscar Ramirez, a lawyer representing both Curran and Facciolla, told TechCrunch in an interview that these new lawsuits suggest little has changed following Schwab’s case.
“There seems to be a general pattern of high-ranking managers engaging in completely insane behavior and targeting employees for any number of protected activities, or because of their characteristics,” he said.
“A frothing rage”
Rivian electric vehicles sit in a lot at a Rivian facility in Chicago. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Curran, who worked at the company’s Irvine, California headquarters, alleges that Hammoud confronted her during a March 2023 meeting in “a frothing rage, red-faced with anger, veins on his head, and neck bulging as he berated her” after she had trouble accessing a computer presentation. She claims the incident brought her to tears.
The next day, according to the complaint, Curran told a Rivian HR representative that she wanted to discuss the incident. But the HR rep allegedly never followed up with Curran and didn’t offer her the opportunity to file a formal complaint.
In the weeks that followed, Hammoud allegedly put Curran on a performance improvement plan based on what Curran’s lawyers say were “false” reasons. During this “reset plan,” Curran claims Hammoud made comments about how much she was or wasn’t smiling. Curran’s lawyers note in the complaint that Hammoud’s comments were “something that other Rivian directors uniformly agreed was not normal.”
In September 2023, Curran was called into a meeting with Hammoud and an HR rep and was fired for failing to make “sufficient improvements during the ‘reset plan’,” according to the complaint.
This was not the first time Hammoud had been accused of harassing employees.
Facciolla, who started working at Rivian in 2017, claims in his lawsuit that Hammoud would regularly “angrily humiliate” employees. This created a toxic culture that led to employees overworking themselves out of fear of Hammoud’s reprisals, according to Facciolla’s complaint.
Just before Christmas in 2022, according to Facciolla’s lawsuit, employees on his team were working 12-to-14 hour days for three weeks straight. One day, Hammoud allegedly got angry that another employee left the office to take care of their sick child. The chief designer then allegedly started “aggressively carving up” Facciolla’s clay model of one of Rivian’s vehicles in response, making “major changes that are typically made in the early phases” of the car development process.
Later that evening, when Facciolla told Hammoud he needed to go home because his wife was working a night shift at the hospital, Hammoud allegedly asked: “Is she a hooker now?”
Facciolla reported Hammoud to HR and, according to the complaint, the department “seemed superficially sympathetic, but proved uninterested in correcting the situation.” Facciolla claims HR spoke to Hammoud, but did not discipline him.
Facciolla began seeing a therapist and eventually took “several weeks off after Christmas to recover” but allegedly experienced more mistreatment from Hammoud when he returned. Facciolla resigned in June 2023.
Hoffmann declined to comment on specifics of any of the allegations laid out in any of the lawsuits. In a followup email, she shared a statement that Rivian has “explicit policies that address appropriate conduct in the workplace and all employees, including executives, are required to follow these policies.”
Trouble in Illinois
Attendees look at the new Rivian R2 electric vehicle at the Rivian South Coast Theater in Laguna Beach, California, on March 7, 2024. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP)
Powe, meanwhile, claims that in November 2022 then-COO Klein “stormed into [his] work area, shouting with rage” and said Powe’s necklace and Rivian-issued jacket violated the company’s dress code.
Klein then allegedly grabbed Powe by the jacket and “forcefully pulled him toward the ground,” before he “proceeded to grab [Powe] by the crotch, and unzipped his pants several times.” Powe claims “several” other employees witnessed this.
Powe reported Klein to Rivian’s HR team that day, according to the lawsuit, and claims the company spent about a month investigating the incident. Meanwhile, Powe filed a police report with the Normal, Illinois police department in December 2022 because he believed “Rivian security was not going to investigate the incident,” according to the responding officer’s summary. The Normal Police Department told TechCrunch the case was closed and no charges were filed.
In his lawsuit, Powe claims “[s]everal other employees” at Rivian’s factory had made “similar complaints against Klein to Rivian’s HR Department” prior to his alleged assault. Powe kept working at Rivian, but was struck by a vehicle at work in September 2023 and injured. He then claims Rivian “maliciously” required him to clock in on the second floor of the factory, and says he was eventually fired in November 2023, which he says was done “without cause.”
Klein left Rivian in September 2024 to become chief operating officer of space company Rocket Lab.
Multiple Rivian settlements
Schwab’s case is not the only harassment lawsuit Rivian has settled in recent years, court records show. TechCrunch has discovered at least two others since 2022.
Battery team member Angela Betancourt sued Rivian in federal court in September 2022 after allegedly being “regularly subjected to unwanted sexual advances by several of her male coworkers” at the company’s factory in Illinois. Betancourt reported the harassment to “several HR representatives,” according to the complaint. But, her lawyers wrote, the company “failed to address such unlawful harassment and the company culture that enables it.”
In an amended complaint filed in August 2023, which sought class action status, Betancourt’s lawyers wrote that it is “common knowledge that women are routinely sexually harassed at Defendant’s facility with the knowledge of management, but without management making any real, substantive effort to correct it.”
After Rivian unsuccessfully tried to move the case to arbitration, the company and Betancourt reached a settlement in August 2024 and the lawsuit was dismissed.
Natasha Hill, an operations and manufacturing associate at Rivian’s factory, sued the company in federal court in October 2023 after another employee allegedly shared an “explicit video” of her with “numerous coworkers.” She claimed the employee continued to show the video to others even after she reported the alleged incident to her supervisors.
Hill claimed in her suit that another employee threatened her with a firearm. After reporting all of this to HR, Hill’s lawsuit states that she was terminated in July 2023 “in connection” with the “investigation regarding the firearm incident.”
Hill and Rivian reached a settlement and dismissed the lawsuit in April 2024.
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