Mehul Reuben DasJan 09, 2023 19:02:32 IST
Elon Musk has asked a judge to order the relocation of a forthcoming shareholder lawsuit trial from San Francisco due to his fears that the jury may be biassed against him. Musk asks the judge to move the trial to West Texas in a filing submitted on Friday because of the locals’ hostility in the Bay Area that surrounds Elon Musk and his enterprises and prevents a fair trial.
Fearing that locals of San Francisco have a negative impression of him and how he handled Twitter, Elon Musk believes that jurors selected from the city will have a negative perception of him and won’t give him a fair trial. Image Credit: AFP
The shareholder class action lawsuit is taking place because of a now-famous 2018 tweet from Musk, in which he claimed to he had the “funding secured” to take Tesla private. The lawsuit accuses him of manipulating the company’s shares.
In the weeks that followed the tweet, Tesla’s stock saw extreme highs and lows, which led to a $40 million fine from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The next trial, according to CNBC, will decide if Musk’s 2018 tweet had an impact on Tesla’s stock price as well as whether Tesla and Musk should be held liable for the alleged damages.
Elon Musk and his team of lawyers fear that the manner in which he fired Twitter employees and the manner in which his dealins at Twitter, one of the most popular places to work in San Francisco has been reported, has made people irate.
“The recent local media coverage has created an environment that encourages the District’s jury pool to hold negative biases against Mr. Musk’s use of Twitter,” the filing reads. “Potential jurors that hold negative opinions about Mr. Musk’s use and relationship with Twitter generally as a result of this coverage will be unable to separate this baseline bias from the facts in this case and thus be unable to impartially evaluate Musk’s conduct.”
The filing also adds that Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter, which included mass layoffs at the company’s San Francisco headquarters and other locations “already created substantial bias” in those who have (or know someone who has) been impacted by the job cuts.
The lawsuit additionally asserts that local officials frequently “promote” rallies against Musk and his San Francisco headquarters, further solidifying this “prejudice,” and leading to an unfair trial. Musk and his attorneys want that the trial be postponed in order to give the “bad feelings” around Musk time to fade if the judge rules against moving the case to Texas, where Tesla is situated.
