About Elon Musk’s hasty announcement in summer 2018, the electric car company Tesla delisting from the stock market has been in court in San Francisco since Tuesday. Investors accuse the tech billionaire in a class action lawsuit that the resulting price fluctuations have cost them money.
At the center of the proceedings are Musk’s tweets at the time, in which he claimed, among other things, that the financing for the purchase of the shares at a premium to the price at the time was “secured”. Later it turned out that there were no final commitments, a withdrawal from the stock exchange was never concrete.
At the start of the trial on Tuesday in California, nine jurors were initially selected. Musk had tried in vain to have the process moved to Texas, where Tesla is currently based. His lawyers argued
, potential San Francisco jurors are generally biased against the billionaire. The judge, however, did not accept this objection. The public can follow the process via audio transmission.
Several candidates were released from jury duty on Tuesday for personal reasons or professional pressures. Many would-be jurors have been critical of Musk — and his attorney, Alex Spiro, has often probed for assurances of an unbiased assessment of the facts. For example, one contestant said what she read about Musk led her to conclude he was “arrogant and narcissistic.” She did not make it onto the nine jurors.
When the lawsuit was filed, Tesla was still headquartered in Palo Alto im Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco. The entrepreneur Musk, long celebrated as a tech visionary, revealed in particular in the course of the acquisition of Twitter right-wing political views – which made him unpopular in traditionally more liberal-minded California.
Judge Edward Chen has already ruled that Musk’s statements in the tweets were not true. While the jury is made aware of this, they are asked to evaluate whether these statements were relevant to investors and harmed them by relying on them. They also need to determine whether Musk was aware that he was making false statements.
The tweets caused a lot of trouble for Musk and Tesla. The 51-year-old and the company each paid fines of $20 million for misleading investors, according to the SEC’s investigation. In addition, Musk had to give up the chairmanship of the board of directors and undertake to have Tesla approve potentially price-sensitive tweets.