SAN FRANCISCO: Elon Musk, the CEO of electric auto mammoth Tesla, will face trial on Tuesday over allegedly manipulating the stock request with a tweet after a civil judge rejected his request to move the case out of California.
The case dates back to August 2018 when Musk twittered that he’d sufficient backing to take Tesla private, causing a whirlwind in the company’s share price.
Musk was fleetly sued by shareholders for allegedly going them billions of bones with the Twitter post that said backing was “secured” to buy out the company’s shareholders.
According to a prophet for the court, Judge Edward Chen on Friday refused to transfer the proceedings to Texas, the southern state where Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters and jury selection is listed to begin on Tuesday.
Defence attorneys had argued that the multibillionaire would be denied a fair trial in San Francisco, where he bought Twitter in late October and has been extensively criticised for his opinions since taking over the social media establishment.
After taking over Twitter, Musk fired further than half of the,500 workers, utmost in San Francisco, and radically changed the point’s content temperance programs.
“For the last several months, the original media have impregnated this quarter with prejudiced and negative stories about Mr. Musk that have fostered. largely prejudicial impulses in the jury pool,” the CEO’s attorneys argued in a form.
“The original media, in a divagation from how they generally cover these stories, have criticized Mr. Musk tête-à-tête for the reductions and indeed indicted him of violating the law,” the attorneys said.
According to Bloomberg, Judge Chen expressed confidence at the hail that unprejudiced jurors could be chosen.
Musk’s short tweet in 2018 has formerly attracted the attention of authorities.
The US stock request controller, the Securities and Exchange Commission, ordered that Musk step down as president of the board of Tesla and pay a forfeiture of$ 20 million.
