And federal jury in the United States determined this Friday that Elon Musk deceived the Twitter shareholdersby criticizing the social network when it was about to buy it through an agreement of 44 billion dollars, according to the ruling consulted by the AFP.
The jury rejected, however, the accusation of deliberate fraudulent maneuver to do lower the share price.
A few minutes after the announcement of the ruling, the Musk’s lawyers informed the AFP that his client had intention to appeal the decisionwhich they described as a “setback.”
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Musk’s tweets caused the price of Twitter to fall
After three weeks of this civil trial, marked by the in-person testimony of the richest man in the world, the jury in a federal court in San Francisco found that two tweets posted by Musk in May 2022 contained false statements, what They made the price of Twitter drop.
Damages, which have yet to be determined, could run into the billions of dollars, according to plaintiffs’ attorneys cited by CNBC.
The ruling marks a rare court defeat for Musk, often nicknamed “Teflon Elon” for his ability to emerge unscathed from lawsuits that many believed he would lose.
His lawyers recalled this fact to the AFPand they stressed that This Friday, a Texas court had exonerated him in a defamation case.
In 2023a jury in the same federal court in San Francisco had Musk exonerated from accusations similar to those of Twitter shareholdersfiled by Tesla shareholders, after Musk reportedly tweeted in 2018 that he had the funds to buy the automaker.
Pushed to sell
Musk, who posts numerous messages daily on X, the former Twitter, did not immediately react to the jury’s decision.
The trial largely revolved around the statements by the tycoon about the number of fake accounts on Twitter. He argued that the platform had many more spam accounts and automated than the 5% declared in its regulatory documents.
In this way, he used what he presented as a hoax on the part of Twitter to justify your attempt to withdraw from the purchase agreement.
After the first message published on the platform on this topic by Musk, in May 2022, the share price fell 17% in two sessionsprompting some shareholders to sell.
The plaintiffs, for their part, alleged that these statements were part of a plan aimed at putting pressure on the board of directors to get a price lower than your initial offerat a time when Tesla’s share price was falling and making financing the operation more expensive.
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After Musk attempted to disassociate himself from the purchase agreement, Twitter sued him in the state of Delaware to bind you to the agreement.
Shortly before the opening of that trial, Musk backed down and agreed to pay the original pricebefore renaming the platform as X.
Some shareholders They thus sold their titles with a discount of more than 30% regarding the price finally paid by Musk.
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