Jury Rules for Elon Musk and Tesla in Investor Lawsuit Over Tweets

After the verdict was read, three jurors answered questions from lawyers for the plaintiffs. One male juror said their arguments were difficult to follow and sometimes seemed disorganized.

“There was nothing there to give me an ‘aha’ moment,” he said, later adding, “Elon Musk is a guy who could sneeze and the stock market could react.”

Throughout the trial, the investors’ lawyers had argued that Mr. Musk knew Tesla was nowhere near going private because no individuals and investment funds had committed specific amounts of money to the deal. There was also neither a definitive structure for a private Tesla nor a clear path to regulatory approval for the plan, the lawyers said.

“This case is about whether rules that apply to everybody else should apply to Elon Musk,” Mr. Porritt said during closing arguments. He added that the stock market “only works because there are rules that keep people honest, so people can trust information in the market.”

The legal team for Mr. Musk and Tesla had argued that the company’s share price may have moved because Mr. Musk said he was considering taking Tesla private, a statement that they say was true. They have also argued that funding was actually plentiful but that Mr. Musk didn’t have exact numbers because he didn’t know how many shareholders would want to continue owning shares in Tesla once it was no longer on the stock exchange.

“Funding was not an issue,” said Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Mr. Musk and Tesla. He added, referring to Mr. Musk, that the deal had collapsed because “his motive was to do right for the shareholders.”

A year after Mr. Musk floated the idea of taking Tesla private, the company’s stock price began climbing as it put its production problems behind it and was for a time one of the best-performing stocks among large companies. Its share price tumbled 65 percent last year as competition in the market for electric cars intensified and Tesla slashed car prices. But the share price has jumped around 50 percent this year.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/business/elon-musk-tesla-investor-trial.html