Jury finds Elon Musk did not defraud Tesla investors with infamous 'funding secured' claim

[Jose Garcia]

Source: NBC News

A jury found Elon Musk not liable for costing investors millions of dollars when he issued a series of tweets saying he had "secured" funding to take the electric car maker private.

The Friday verdict, issued by a nine-person Northern California jury, represents a legal victory for the 51-year-old billionaire, who has seen the value of his Tesla holdings decline some 44% over the past year.

During the trial, Musk personally took the witness stand to defend the tweets, testifying he believed he had a handshake agreement in 2018 with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund to convert Tesla, which is a publicly traded company, into a private one. It was the Saudis, he said, who subsequently reneged on the deal.

“I had no ill motive,” Musk said during nearly eight hours of testimony last month. “My intent was to do the right thing for all shareholders.”

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/elon-musk-funding-secured-trial-verdict-rcna68634

[NullTuples]

1. I detest Elon Musk. But also, buying stock is *supposed* to be a gamble, right?

Still, if someone who heads up a company tells you, "hey, I'm going to take the company private, I have secured funding to do so" that could very well influence someone's decision to buy more stock or sell. Seems like fraud to me...

[unblock]

3. It's not supposed to be a gamble about whether if not there's fraud involved

All signs point to musk made the whole thing up as a joke, down to the price being $420 a share. When people took him seriously enough for it to make the stock price jolt, he invented a Saudi handshake agreement.

Which still isn't good enough. No responsible ceo blabs about a major acquisition like that without a written agreement.

Whether this amounted to criminal fraud or not, why would I invest in a stock whose price can swing wildly based on some random idiotic half deal that musk thinks he has when he doesn't?

[NullTuples]

5. There are people who make money off stock swings. Especially if they can cause them.

[unblock]

6. Yeah that's supposed to be illegal.

Supposed to be...

[moniss]

7. Just look at the huge increase

over the last couple of weeks. Obvious disconnect between reality and price/bidding. The sad thing is this clown of a CEO takes events like this trial and plugs it into his sociopath behavior and believes he is even more correct in his belief in his omnipotence. Meanwhile the SEC sits like a toothless hound baying at the moon and refusing to enforce it's previous agreements with this lunatic.

[OnlinePoker]

8. According to the article, he paid the SEC $40 million for this stunt. n/t

[moniss]

10. Not one ounce of responsibility and his exorbitant compensation package

that was granted took care of what to him was a minor amount of money. A prior Federal judge ruled that the buyout statement was false but they have kept the judgement sealed. I don't know if the plaintiffs tried to get it unsealed and admitted in this case. His continued violations of his SEC agreement obviously shows he could care less and feels nobody can touch him. Here is a bit from Wiki:

SEC lawsuit

In 2018, Musk was sued by the SEC for a tweet claiming that funding had been secured for potentially taking Tesla private.[137][d] The lawsuit characterized the tweet as false, misleading, and damaging to investors, and sought to bar Musk from serving as CEO of publicly traded companies.[137][141][142] Two days later, Musk settled with the SEC, without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations. As a result, Musk and Tesla were fined $20 million each, and Musk was forced to step down for three years as Tesla chairman but was able to remain as CEO.[143] Musk has stated in interviews that he does not regret posting the tweet that triggered the SEC investigation.[144][145] In April 2022, the shareholder who sued Musk over the tweet, along with several Tesla shareholders, said that a federal judge had ruled that the tweet was false, although the ruling in question has not been unsealed.[146] On February 3, 2023, a jury returned a "not liable" verdict in Musk's and Tesla's favor.[147]

In 2019, Musk stated in a tweet that Tesla would build half a million cars that year.[148] The SEC reacted to Musk's tweet by filing in court, asking the court to hold him in contempt for violating the terms of a settlement agreement with such a tweet; the accusation was disputed by Musk. This was eventually settled by a joint agreement between Musk and the SEC clarifying the previous agreement details.[149] The agreement included a list of topics that Musk would need preclearance before tweeting about.[150] In 2020, a judge prevented a lawsuit from proceeding that claimed a tweet by Musk regarding Tesla stock price ("too high imo&quot violated the agreement.[151][152] FOIA-released records showed that the SEC itself concluded Musk has subsequently violated the agreement twice by tweeting regarding "Tesla's solar roof production volumes and its stock price".[153]

[former9thward]

13. So if Tesla stock goes up there is an "Obvious disconnect between reality and price/bidding"

Maybe when it went down that was the disconnect with reality. It is now adjusting back to the reality that it is the market leader in EVs and the only one making money.

[moniss]

15. Hardly sir

and manipulation goes goth ways by way of the disconnect. It was and has been wildly over-priced for a very long time. It's supposed lead and profitability are by way of manipulation also. Check out how many CFO changes they've had in their short history. I wouldn't trust a Tesla financial statement period. But then again the people who double and triple this stock repeatedly are the same ones who have been running AMC and Gamestop up to riduclous levels also. Collaborative stock manipulation, whether up or down, using social media/"investor sites/platforms" etc. is just one more example of colossal failure at the SEC. Similar to the "we don't know if we can or should do anything" attitude about crypto. Gee SEC maybe you're right about sitting on the sidelines because you all were so right about a "hands off" approach to derivatives and CDOs when you told us that they weren't really a danger to the economic system and were really just like "insurance" policies on transactions/financial instruments. That worked out so well before didn't it.

[former9thward]

11. Tesla stock is now worth 8 times it was at the time of the tweet.

Nobody lost anything. They gained by his keeping it public.

[unblock]

12. Oh come on

You know better than that.

People trade stocks every day and just because the stock price today is higher than it was then doesn't mean that people didn't lose a ton of money.

Someone who bought it at 400 when they should have been able to buy it at 380 got screwed out of $20 a share even if they held it and it's now worth 6 times that or whatever.


Oh look, s&p500 is near an all-time high, therefore no one ever lost money in the stock market. Ridiculous, obviously.


If no one has been damaged there would not have been a case to begin with.

[former9thward]

14. I don't thin there was a case.

And the jury agreed. The SP 500 is off considerably from its high but that is another matter. I try and look at a company's fundamentals when I buy stock. I don't read the CEO's tweets.

[moniss]

16. The jury

finding is not clear as to whether they felt it was innocence or if it was a failure to prove on the part of the plaintiffs lawyers.

[Justice matters.]

2. Can an appeal be launched or is it the end of that case?

[Miguelito Loveless]

4. No appeal.

[moniss]

9. We also don't know

Last edited Sat Feb 4, 2023, 01:29 AM - Edit history (1)

if the headline is misleading. Did the jury find he didn't do it or did the jury find that the plaintiff's lawyers had not proven their case. Those can be two different things. This cocked up story by him sounds like a replay of his strategy in the defamation case where he called someone "pedo guy" when that person had criticized Musk and his very flawed and grandiose scheme to rescue some trapped people. Invented a story claiming everybody in South Africa used that term. Juries keep letting these powerful people off the hook for literally any behavior. So is it any wonder that we have a failed former President causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands and severe long term injury to the health of many more all done for his personal political/financial gain and yet our hopes for any penalty to this man will hinge on some document possession they will explain/plea bargain away or phony real estate scams that likewise will be bargained?

Look at the minimal penalties to Weaselnuts the money man. His family left untouched despite clear evidence of their knowing participation. He wasn't even required to testify against his boss who knew all about it and participated in it.

[SunSeeker]

17. Justice for sale. When you're rich, you can buy the best attorneys to get you out of messes. nt

[Jose Garcia]

18. Tell that to Harvey Weinstein, Martha Stewart, Ghislaine Maxwell,

Phil Spector, Martin Shkreli, and Bernie Madoff.

[SunSeeker]

20. They're not as rich as Elon. nt

[Martin68]

19. I don't know enough about the law to judge whether Musk is guilty.

It certainly looked like he was guilty of releasing false information to influence share prices. Can he prove he had an agreement with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund? Did the jury just take his word for it?