Jury Rules Elon Musk Guilty of Misleading Investors

(SeaPRwire) –   The world’s richest man may have to pay as much as $2.6 billion in damages, according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, was found guilty in California of misleading investors during his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in 2022.

The class-action lawsuit—filed shortly before Musk took control of the social media platform he later rebranded as X—focused on two tweets and comments the tech billionaire made during a May 2022 podcast. After those statements, including a post claiming the Twitter deal was “temporarily on hold,” the company’s shares dropped by nearly 10% in a single trading session.

A nine-member jury in San Francisco delivered its verdict on Friday, stating that the tech billionaire used his tweets to mislead shareholders who sold Twitter stock at a lower price because of his announcements.

However, the jury also found nothing improper about Musk’s podcast comments and that he did not intentionally “scheme” to mislead investors.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO could face up to $2.6 billion in damages, per the Twitter shareholders’ lawyers. Musk’s fortune is estimated at around $814 billion.

Mark Molumphy, an attorney for the plaintiffs, emphasized that the verdict is “an important victory, not just for Twitter investors, but for the public markets” and “sends a strong message that just because you’re a rich and powerful person, you still have to obey the law.”

Musk’s legal team said they will appeal the ruling. “We view today’s verdict—where the jury found both for and against the plaintiffs and no fraud scheme—as a bump in the road,” the Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan legal team stated.

Musk, an extremely active X user, has not yet commented on the jury’s decision.

The billionaire is often called “Teflon Elon” for his ability to win even the most challenging legal cases. In 2023, a jury in the same San Francisco court cleared him of similar misleading investor charges, stemming from his 2018 claim that he had funds to take Tesla private (a deal that never occurred).