Elon Musk Asks Judge to Move Trial Over Tesla Tweets

A federal judge is set to hear Elon Musk's request to move a forthcoming securities fraud trial involving comments he made while serving as Tesla Inc.'s CEO.

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Arguments made by Mr. Musk's attorneys last week suggested that potential jurors in the upcoming trial in San Francisco could be biased against the billionaire due to his use and recent management of Twitter. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen held a hearing on the issue Friday morning.
Mr. Musk and Tesla are facing a trial next week over a shareholder lawsuit relating to his tweets in 2018 suggesting he had funding to take the electric-vehicle company private.

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In 2018, Mr. Musk tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share. The deal would have been valued at $72 billion at the time. However, the deal never materialized. Investors sued Tesla and Mr. Musk, claiming that his tweets were false and that they had lost billions of dollars because of the fluctuations in Tesla's stock price.

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The plaintiffs in the case are seeking damages, and have said in a pretrial briefing that the days of turmoil caused by Mr. Musk's assertions cost investors billions of dollars. The defendants have countered that the plaintiffs will not be able to show that Mr. Musk's statements were materially false or misleading.
In court filings, Mr. Musk has maintained that his tweets were accurate and that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund had agreed to support his attempt to take Tesla private. However, Judge Chen ruled last year that Mr. Musk’s tweets about taking the company private were false and misleading.

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San Francisco's jury pool has been "exposed to excessive and adverse pretrial publicity concerning Defendant Elon Musk that could deprive him of an impartial jury and his constitutional right to a fair trial," Mr. Musk's attorneys argued in a court filing last week. The lawyers representing the plaintiffs in this case have argued this week that Elon Musk's Twitter conduct should not be taken into account when determining the verdict. They have made this argument in a legal filing, among other things.

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In late October, Mr. Musk purchased San Francisco-based social-media site Twitter Inc. and soon after laid off about half of its staff. In a court filing, Mr. Musk’s attorneys argued that Twitter’s recent staff reductions, including almost 1,000 employees in the federal-court district that includes San Francisco, have caused prejudice against Mr. Musk among jurors. Mr. Musk’s lawyers also cited negative responses from local politicians and media in the filing.

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The attorneys for Mr. Musk have requested that the trial be held in western Texas. Tesla moved its headquarters from northern California to Austin in late 2021. The plaintiffs have argued that the case shouldn't be moved, in part because there was no connection between Tesla and western Texas at the time Mr. Musk sent the tweets that sparked the litigation.

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Minor Myers, a professor at the University of Connecticut specializing in corporate law, said that it is unlikely that the trial will be moved to Texas.
"It's hard to believe that you can't find a jury in San Francisco because of the things people say on Twitter about Elon Musk," he said.

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In 2018, Mr. Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million to settle a civil lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission over Mr. Musk's tweets. Mr. Musk also relinquished the role of Tesla chairman, though he remained the company's chief executive. He later said in legal filings that he felt pressured to settle the suit. Last year, a federal judge denied Mr. Musk's request to scrap the settlement.

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Mr. Musk's attorneys have asked the court to delay the trial if the venue is not moved, so that "the passions and prejudice" can fade.