A trial once morest Elon Musk, accused by investors of writing a fraudulent tweet, is due to open in San Francisco on Tuesday, following a judge on Friday rejected a request by the Tesla boss’ lawyers to transfer the case out of California. .
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The case dates back to the summer of 2018, when Elon Musk tweeted that he had sufficient funding to take Tesla out of the stock market, a message that had caused the stock to fluctuate strongly for a few days.
On August 10, a complaint was filed once morest the business executive for having “artificially manipulated the price of Tesla’s stock in order to completely ruin investors” who are betting on the price drop.
Four and a half years later, the last barrier to holding a trial seems to have been lifted.
According to the court, Judge Edward Chen refused to transfer the prosecution to Texas, the US state where Elon Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters, and jury selection is due to begin on Tuesday.
The defense argued that the multi-billionaire might not benefit from an impartial trial in San Francisco, where he bought Twitter in late October, and was widely criticized for his decisions, from the platform’s content moderation policy to mass layoffs.
“In recent months, local media has saturated this district with biased and negative stories regarding Mr. Musk,” the attorneys said in a motion last week.
“The local press, contrary to its usual way of covering (the redundancy plans), personally blamed Mr. Musk for the job cuts and even accused him of breaking the law. Local elected officials, including the mayor of San Francisco, participated in protests once morest him,” they continued.
Edward Chen, on the contrary, estimated on Friday that an impartial jury might be constituted in the Californian city, noting that “Mr. Musk has a lot of fans around here”, according to Bloomberg.
In a previous decision related to this case, the judge ruled that the famous 2018 tweet might be considered “false and misleading”.
The short message from the boss of Tesla has already earned him numerous disputes with the authorities.
The American stock market policeman, the SEC, considering that Elon Musk had not provided proof of his financing, had also filed a complaint at the time.
The regulator then forced him to hand over the chairmanship of Tesla’s board of directors, pay a $20 million fine and later demanded that his tweets directly related to Tesla’s activity be pre-approved by a lawyer. competent.
Elon Musk tried once more in the spring to invalidate this decision, in vain.
