SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A jury decided Friday that Elon Musk did not defraude investors with his 2018 tweets about electric automaker Tesla in a proposed deal, in a debate about whether the billionaire misled investors. Raised questions about this.
The nine-member jury reached its verdict after less than two hours of deliberations after a three-week trial. It represents a major piece of evidence for Musk, who spent nearly eight hours on the witness stand defending his motives for the August 2018 tweets at the center of the trial.
Kasturi, 51, was not on hand for the brief reading of the verdict, but she made a surprise appearance earlier on Friday to close the arguments, which drew separate portraits of her.
Shortly after the verdict came, Musk took to Twitter — the bullying platform that now owns him — to celebrate.
“Thank God, the wisdom of the people has triumphed!” Musk tweeted.
Michael Friedman, a former federal prosecutor, said Musk’s decision to step aside from his other responsibilities to sit in on closing arguments, even though he did not have to be there, could have an impact on jurors who now work in private practice. Has been to a law firm that has represented celebrities and business executives.
“It shows they have a presence,” Friedman said.
FILE: Elon Musk departs the Philip Burton Federal Building and United States Court House in San Francisco on Jan. 24, 2023 (AP Photo/Benjamin Fanjoy, File)
Nicolas Porritt, an attorney representing troubled Tesla investors, said he was disappointed after he urged jurors in his arguments to reprimand Musk for reckless behavior that threatens to create “chaos.”
“I don’t think we expect this kind of conduct from a large public company,” a disappointed Porritt said after discussing the verdict with some of the jurors who had gathered to talk to him. “People can draw their own conclusions about whether they think it’s okay or not.”
During their discussions with Porritt, jurors told him they received testimony from Musk that he believed he raised money from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund without a written commitment to be reliable. He also cast doubt on whether Musk’s tweet was the sole reason for the volatility in Tesla’s share price during the 10-day period involved in the case in August 2018.
The Tesla investors involved in the trial represent a class-action lawsuit against Musk, who is CEO of both the electric automaker and the Twitter service he bought a few months ago for $44 billion.
On August 7, 2018, shortly before boarding his private jet, Musk tweeted that he had the financing to take Tesla private, even though it turned out that he had not received an iron-clad commitment to a deal. Which would cost $ 20 billion. $70 billion to withdraw. A few hours later, Musk sent out another tweet indicating that a deal was imminent.
Musk’s integrity was on trial as well as part of a fortune that established him as one of the richest men in the world. Had the jury found him liable for the 2018 tweets, he could have been saddled with a billion-dollar damages bill, which the judge presiding over the trial had already deemed false.
That determination, made last year by US District Judge Edward Chen, left it to a jury to decide whether Musk was negligent with his tweets and acted in a way that caused injury to Tesla shareholders.
“It can’t be difficult for the jury,” Friedman said, “because it became like an up or down vote.”
A Tesla electric vehicle sits in a charging station at a dealership on February 18, 2021 in Dedham, Massachusetts. (AP/Steven Senn)
Earlier on Friday, Musk sat in court during the closing arguments of the trial, while he was hailed as both a rich and carefree narrator and a visionary in search of the “little man”.
During the one-hour presentation, Porritt implored the jurors to reprimand Musk for having a “loose relationship with the truth”.
“Our society is based on rules,” Porritt said. “We need rules to protect us from chaos. The rules should apply to Elon Musk like everyone else.”
Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, acknowledged that the 2018 tweets were “technically incorrect”. But he told jurors, “Just because it’s a bad tweet doesn’t make it fraud.”
During nearly eight hours on the first stand of the trial, Musk insisted he believed he had raised money from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to take Tesla private after eight years as a publicly held company. He defended his early August 2018 tweet as being well-intentioned and aimed at making sure all Tesla investors knew the automaker may be on its way to ending its run as a publicly held company.
“I had no bad intentions,” Musk testified. “My intention was to do the right thing for all shareholders.”
Spiro echoed that theme in his closing argument.
“He was trying to contain the retail shareholder, the mom and pop, the little guy, and not seize more power for himself,” Spiro said.
In this courtroom sketch, Elon Musk appears in federal court in San Francisco on February 3, 2023. (Vickie Behringer via AP)
Meanwhile, Porritt scoffed at the notion that Musk could have concluded he had a firm commitment after a 45-minute meeting at the Tesla factory on July 31, 2018, with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Wealth Fund. No written document.
In his 90-minute presentation, Spiro emphasized Musk’s track record in helping start and run a list of companies that includes Tesla, besides digital payments pioneer PayPal and rocket ship maker SpaceX. The Austin, Texas-based automaker is now worth about $600 billion, despite a sharp drop in its share price last year amid concerns that Musk’s purchase of Twitter would distract him from Tesla.
Recalling Musk’s roots as a South African immigrant who came to Silicon Valley to build revolutionary tech companies, Spiro described his client as “the kind of person who makes the impossible possible.”
