Musk says he can’t get fair trial in California, wants Texas
WASHINGTON (AP) — Elon Musk has urged a federal choose to shift a trial in a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco as a result of he says detrimental native media protection has biased potential jurors towards him.
As an alternative, in a submitting submitted late Friday, Musk’s attorneys argue that the trial must be moved to a federal court docket in western Texas, which incorporates the state capital of Austin. Musk relocated his electrical automobile firm, Tesla, to Austin in late 2021.
If a transfer is not doable, Musk’s attorneys urged that the trial, scheduled to start Jan. 17, be postponed till detrimental publicity round Musk’s buy of Twitter has died down.
“For the final a number of months, the native media have saturated this district with biased and detrimental tales about Mr. Musk,” legal professional Alex Spiro wrote in a court docket submitting. These gadgets have personally blamed Musk for current layoffs at Twitter, Spiro wrote, and have charged that the job cuts might have even violated legal guidelines.
The shareholder lawsuit stems from Musk’s tweets in August 2018 when he mentioned he had ample financing to take Tesla non-public at $420 a share, an announcement that triggered heavy volatility in Tesla’s share worth.
In a victory for the shareholders final spring, Choose Edward Chen dominated that the tweets have been false and reckless.
The submitting by Musk’s attorneys additionally notes that Twitter has laid off about 1,000 residents within the San Francisco space since he bought the corporate in late October.
“A considerable portion of the jury pool … is more likely to maintain a private and materials bias towards Mr. Musk because of current layoffs at certainly one of his firms as particular person potential jurors — or their pals and family — might have been personally impacted,” the submitting mentioned.
Musk has additionally been criticized by San Francisco’s mayor and different native officers for the job cuts, the submitting mentioned.
