Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his security detail leave the company’s local office in Washington, January 27, 2023.
Jonathan Ernst Reuters
Elon Musk and Tesla were found not liable by a jury in San Francisco federal court on Friday in a class-action securities fraud trial stemming from a tweet Musk made in 2018.
At Tesla, the CEO of SpaceX and Twitter was sued by Tesla shareholders through a series of tweets written in August 2018 saying that they had “safe funds” to take the private car for $420 per share, and that “investor support” for the deal was “confirmed.” ” Trading in Tesla was halted after the tweets, and the stock price remained volatile for several weeks.
The jury deliberated for less than two hours before reading the verdict. “We are disappointed by the verdict and are considering our next steps,” said Nicholas Porritt, a partner at Levi & Korsinski, the firm that represents the shareholders in the class action.
“I really appreciate the jury’s findings,” Musk said wrote on Twitter.
“He didn’t think ahead in that quick moment that this could be interpreted differently and what it means,” Musk’s attorney told jurors earlier Friday. “At that moment he did not think, ‘how can my words be interpreted differently from what they mean to me.’
“You have to put this in context — he’s considering taking it private and that’s going to be a problem,” Musk’s lawyer said. “There is no fraud that has been built behind the reasoning.”
Musk’s top adviser did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The shareholders in the certified class action lawsuit include a mix of stock and option buyers who claim that Musk’s tweets are reckless and false, and that they rely on those claims to make decisions about when to buy or sell at the expense of large amounts of money.
Musk then claimed that he had a verbal commitment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and thought the funding would be done at the proposed price based on a handshake. However, the deal never materialized.
During this trial, Musk also said he would sell SpaceX shares to finance a private deal for Tesla, as well as take funding from the Saudi Public Investment Fund.