Following Elon Musk’s recent victory in the securities fraud trial, Tesla The CEO’s lawyer has once again asked the appeal court throw away his 2018 deal A company lawyer with the Securities and Exchange Commission is required to review its Tesla-related tweets before sharing them.
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On February 3, a jury in San Francisco federal court found that Musk and Tesla were not liable in a class-action securities fraud trial stemming from tweets made by Musk in 2018.
The centi-billionaire, who is also the CEO of SpaceX and Twitter, was sued by Tesla shareholders over a series of tweets he wrote in August 2018 that called for the automaker to be taken private for $420 per share. “Funding was secured”, and that “investor support” was “confirmed” for such a deal.
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Trading in Tesla was halted following his tweet and its share price was volatile for weeks.
Musk had previously settled with the SEC over the tweets in 2018, and eventually entered into a revised settlement agreement, which required a legal and regulatory compliance point person at Tesla (informally, a “Twitter Sitter”) to pre-empt any of Musk’s tweets. Was asked to approve. Any information about a publicly traded company that could affect its share price.
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Musk’s attorney, Quinn Emanuel partner Alex Spiro, wrote a letter to the court this week alleging the SEC lacked support for their revised settlement agreement in light of the jury’s recent finding.
“The jury’s decision further reasons that the public interest in avoiding unconstitutional settlements easily outweighs the SEC’s stated stake,” Spiro wrote in a filing.
Musk and the SEC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Lawyers for shareholders suing Musk and Tesla over tech-Private related tweets still have time to file an appeal. Levy & Korsinski partner Nicholas Porritt, lead counsel for the shareholders in that case, did not respond to a request for comment.
At the time of the jury’s verdict on February 3, 2023, Porritt told CNBC via e-mail, “We are disappointed by the verdict and are considering next steps.”
Read the letter here.
