Elon Musks lawyer accuses San Francisco jury of bias, points to mocking $4.20 reference in damages | Latest Tech News
Elon Musk’s lawyer is accusing a San Francisco federal jury of “mocking” the billionaire by including “$4.20” among the figures pertaining to damages in a class-action go well with that accused the tech titan of deceptive Twitter buyers.
In a Thursday letter to US District Judge Charles Breyer, protection attorney Alex Spiro argued the verdict was “corrupted” by bias in the notoriously left-leaning metropolis and denied his shopper a honest trial.
Spiro is in search of a probe into the matter — to be adopted by a movement in search of a ruling in favor of Musk or a new trial.
Elon Musk is seen arriving at San Francisco federal court on March 4. Getty Images
The laywer cited a handwritten verdict type in which jurors listed “$4.20” for one damages entry — written in vibrant blue ink while the remaining of the entries have been black.
Spiro said the bizarre entry was no accident, calling it a deliberate jab at Musk tied to his well-known affiliation with the quantity 420.
“The inescapable conclusion,” the attorney wrote, “is that the jury felt it appropriate to use its verdict to send a message to Mr. Musk.”
He accused jurors of injecting “outside influence and noise” into what ought to have been a impartial deliberation.
The quantity 420 is widely acknowledged as slang for marijuana and has been half of a working joke by Musk.
In 2018, he tweeted he was contemplating taking Tesla non-public at “$420” — a post that triggered an SEC fraud case — and later set his Twitter buyout price at $54.20 per share, reinforcing the affiliation.
The jury discovered last week that Musk defrauded buyers by deliberately driving down Twitter’s stock price before he acquired it in 2022, later renaming it X.
A handwritten verdict type in which jurors listed “$4.20” is grounds for a new trial, according to Musk’s lawyer. Quinn Emanuel
Spiro argued in his letter filed Thursday that the jury wasn’t really “deciding a securities fraud case” but sending Musk a message.
“The jury’s emphasis on the $4.20 number, which had no significance to its damages determination, but appears to be a mocking reference to a number previously associated with Mr. Musk, shows that the verdict was a mockery of justice: a commentary not on whether Mr. Musk committed securities fraud (he did not) but on the jury’s views about Mr. Musk himself,” Spiro wrote.
“No reasonable and experienced person could have any faith in the fairness of this proceeding or its resulting verdict,” he concluded.
Plaintiffs in the high-stakes case had alleged Musk made public statements about the prevalence of spam accounts and the standing of the Twitter deal that depressed the company’s stock price, harming merchants who bought shares or associated choices during the period.
The jury discovered Musk liable for some of the fraud claims — but rejected the main allegation, that he carried out a deliberate “scheme” to manipulate Twitter’s stock price.
In his Thursday letter, Spiro claimed Musk was disadvantaged of his chosen counsel after plaintiffs’ legal professionals indicated they meant to call Spiro himself as a witness — a transfer that would create a battle under the advocate-witness rule.
The lawyer, of Manhattan-based powerhouse firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, said he was compelled to step back from a jury-facing function as a consequence. However, plaintiffs never called him to testify.
Musk lawyer Alex Spiro took goal at the venue of the trial, arguing that seating an neutral jury in San Francisco was successfully unattainable. Getty Images
Spiro also took goal at the venue of the trial, arguing that seating an neutral jury in San Francisco was successfully unattainable given widespread detrimental views of Musk there.
“I remained concerned that Mr. Musk would be unable to seat an impartial jury given his notoriety and reputation in the District,” Spiro wrote in the letter.
He pointed to feedback from Judge Breyer during jury choice — including that “[m]aybe if I went in a different part of the country, I might get a different panel” — as evidence the jury pool was biased.
According to the submitting, the court was compelled to settle for jurors with preexisting views because excluding all probably biased candidates would have made it impractical to seat a panel.
Spiro is pushing to overturn the jury’s verdict. Matthew McDermott
Taken together, the arguments lay the groundwork for a formal movement in search of a new trial or mistrial — a transfer that may upend the verdict just days after it was reached.
In a notable apart, Spiro also referenced a separate legal battle in Delaware. He took a swipe at Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, the jurist who twice denied Musk a substantial payday from Tesla shareholders.
Spiro famous that McCormick had publicly reacted to a verdict in yet another case by endorsing a LinkedIn post celebrating an consequence against Musk.
Musk not too long ago demanded McCormick recuse herself from the Delaware case, a class motion lawsuit against Tesla.
McCormick responded that the obvious endorsement might have been unintended — or one thing else fully.
“I either did not click the ‘support’ icon at all, or I did so accidentally,” she wrote, including: “I do not believe that I did it accidentally.”
The Post has sought remark from the plaintiffs’ attorney in the San Francisco go well with.
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