A senior Campbell Soup Company executive is under scrutiny after a former employee filed a lawsuit that includes a secret recording containing crude and offensive remarks allegedly made during a work meeting.

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The audio, released as part of the complaint, purports to capture Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer Martin Bally criticizing Campbell’s products and disparaging the customers who buy them.

Campbell’s says it is investigating and has placed Bally on temporary leave, adding that the alleged comments do not reflect the company’s values.

What the lawsuit against Campbell’s Soup alleges was said

Former Campbell’s security analyst Robert Garza worked remotely for the company beginning in September 2024. He said he recorded the meeting because his “instinct that something wasn’t right with Martin” pushed him to document what he heard. Garza said the session ran for more than an hour and left him sickened.

Garza told Local 4 in Michigan that Bally insulted the company’s products and mocked the people who buy them. According to the filing, Bally claimed Campbell’s makes “highly processed food” for “poor people.”

The voice on the recording added, “We have sh*t for f*cking poor people. Who buys our sh*t? I don’t buy Campbell’s products barely anymore. It’s not healthy now that I know what the f*ck‘s in it.”

He also rejected the idea of “bioengineered meat,” saying, “I don’t wanna eat a piece of chicken that came from a 3-D printer.”

The recording also captured racist comments targeted at Indian coworkers. Bally allegedly said in one section of the audio, “F*cking Indians don’t know a f*cking thing. Like they couldn’t think for their f*cking selves.”

Additionally, Garza alleged that Bally admitted to arriving at work high from weed edibles, which he included in the lawsuit. 

In a statement to the Daily Dot, a Campbell’s spokesperson wrote:

“If the comments were in fact made, they are unacceptable. They do not reflect our values and the culture of our company. Mr. Bally is temporarily on leave while we conduct an investigation.”

“We are proud of the food we make, the people who make it and the high-quality ingredients we use. The comments heard on the recording about our food are not only inaccurate—they are patently absurd.”

“Keep in mind, the person alleged to be speaking on the recording works in IT and has no nothing to do with how we make our food.”

As for the chicken, the spokesperson added, “The chicken meat used in our soups comes from long-trusted, USDA approved U.S. suppliers and meets our high quality standards. All of our soups are made with No Antibiotics Ever chicken meat, meaning we don’t allow antibiotics to be added to the feed, water, or any commercial vaccines used by our chicken suppliers.”

Retaliation claims followed the complaint

Garza held onto the audio for months without reporting it, but in January 2025, he approached his supervisor, J.D. Aupperle, to report the comments. According to Garza and his attorney, Zachary Runyan, the situation escalated quickly.

Runyan said Garza was terminated 20 days after reporting the behavior.

“He reached out to his supervisor and told the supervisor what Martin was saying, and then out of nowhere, my client was fired,” the attorney said, raising potential retaliation concerns.

Reactions to the lawsuit

Folks online were not particularly surprised by the news. One person on Instagram said, “I’m sorry, but this soup is gross and you shouldn’t need a Campbell’s employee to tell you that.”

“YO! I’m not shocked but it’s crazy to hear it out loud,” another person added.

@Sanatozaki1111 tweeted, “At this point I feel like the US is just one big experiment and the people are literally seen as purely products. Like why is the only western country that likes to knowingly feed its people the most chemically transformed and processed poison just to make money and profit.”

According to Local 4, Campbell Soup Company issued a statement about the lawsuit, saying, “If accurate, the comments in the recording are unacceptable. They do not reflect our values and the culture of our company. We are actively investigating this matter.”

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Reddit is suing Anthropic for allegedly using the site’s data to train AI models without a proper licensing agreement, according to a complaint filed in a Northern California court on Wednesday. Reddit claims in the complaint that Anthropic’s unauthorized use of the site’s data for commercial purposes was unlawful, and alleges the AI startup violated Reddit’s user agreement.

Reddit’s lawsuit makes it the first Big Tech company to legally challenge an AI model provider over its training data practices, joining a litany of publishers that have sued tech companies on similar grounds.

The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for training on its news articles without payment or permission. Meanwhile, Sarah Silverman and other book authors have sued Meta for training AI models on their books without approval. Music publishers and artists have also brought similar claims against AI audio, video, and image generation startups, alleging misuse of their content.

“We will not tolerate profit-seeking entities like Anthropic commercially exploiting Reddit content for billions of dollars without any return for redditors or respect for their privacy,” said Ben Lee, Reddit’s chief legal officer, in a statement to TechCrunch.

Notably, Reddit has inked deals with other AI model providers, including OpenAI and Google, that allow these companies to train AI models on Reddit’s data and have the site’s posts appear in their respective AI chatbots’ answers. However, in the filing, Reddit says it subjects OpenAI and Google to certain terms that protect its users’ interests and privacy.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has an 8.7% stake in Reddit, making him the third-largest shareholder, and was once a member of the company’s board of directors.

In the filing, Reddit claims that it approached Anthropic and made clear that the AI startup did not have authorization to scrape or use Reddit’s content. However, Reddit alleges that Anthropic “refused to engage.”

Anthropic did not immediately provide a comment when reached by TechCrunch.

Reddit claims in its complaint that Anthropic’s scraper bots ignored the social network’s robots.txt files, a standard that signals to automated systems not to crawl websites. As further evidence that Anthropic trained on Reddit data, Reddit alleges that Anthropic’s AI chatbot, Claude, frequently references Reddit communities and topics on Reddit.

Reddit is asking Anthropic to pay compensatory damages, as well as restitution for the amount by which Anthropic has been enriched by scraping Reddit’s content. Reddit also requests an injunction prohibiting Anthropic from continuing to use Reddit’s content.

Ryan Phillippe is being sued by a woman who claims that her hair caught on fire at his restaurant in Los Angeles.

Jody Sanders is suing Phillippe, 50, as well as his business partner, Jeffrey Best, and their Beverly Hills restaurant, The Hideaway, for general negligence, according to court documents obtained by Us Weekly on Wednesday, May 28. 

The docs state that Sanders was sitting at the bar in The Hideaway on April 6, 2024, “when the accident happened.” Her hair was allegedly “burned by an unattended wax candle burning” on the surface of the bar.

Sanders is seeking an unspecified amount in damages.

Phillippe opened The Hideaway, an upscale Mexican steakhouse, in July 2022. A source told Us Weekly on Wednesday that “Ryan is a minority investor in this restaurant and is not involved in day to day operations. It’s not clear as to why he’s listed in this lawsuit as he’s one of many minority investors and not one of the owners.” 

The source noted that Sanders’ claims “were settled by the restaurant’s insurance a year ago.”

Phillippe rose to fame in the 1990s as the star in films including I Know What You Did Last Summer, 54, and Cruel Intentions. The actor and investor married Reese Witherspoon, his costar in the latter film, in 1999. The exes divorced in 2006 and share daughter Ava, 25, and son Deacon, 21. (Phillippe also shares daughter Kai, 13, with ex Alexis Knapp.)

Phillippe currently costars with Deacon in Prime Video’s Motorheads, a coming-of-age series that premiered on May 20. Phillippe plays the role of Logan Maddox, while Deacon appears in flashbacks as Logan’s younger brother, Christian. 

“It’s so unique to be in a situation like this where you’re both working on a show with really good people,” Phillippe exclusively told Us at the show’s L.A. premiere on May 13. “It definitely wasn’t lost on either of us.”

He recalled being on set with Deacon, adding, “There were times when we would look at each other and just be like, ‘Can you believe that we’re actually doing this?’”

Despite his long list of film and TV credits, Phillippe noted that fatherhood is the job in which he takes the most pride. 

“I’m proud of all three of my children,” he told Us. “It’s such an honor to be a father, generally — and they make me proud every day in different ways.”

Motorheads executive producer John A. Norris told Us that Phillippe pulled no strings in his son’s casting. 

“Him showing up [to set] — not to play Logan — but because his son was there was really sweet. He really was not involved in the hiring of Deacon,” Norris said. “We sort of kept it from him for a little while. Then we came to him and yeah, he would show up.”