WASHINGTON (National Times) \u2014 Elon Musk has urged a federal judge to shift a trial in a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco because he says negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him.<\/p>\n
Instead, in a filing submitted late Friday \u2014 less than two weeks before the trial was set to begin on Jan. 17 \u2014 Musk\u2019s lawyers argue it should be moved to the federal court in the western district of Texas. That district includes the state capital of Austin, which is where Musk relocated his electric car company, Tesla, in late 2021.<\/p>\n
The shareholder lawsuit stems from Musk\u2019s tweets in August 2018 when he said he had sufficient financing to take Tesla private at $420 a share \u2014 an announcement that caused heavy volatility in Tesla\u2019s share price.<\/p>\n
In a victory for the shareholders\u2019 last spring, Judge Edward Chen ruled that Musk\u2019s tweets were false and reckless.<\/p>\n
If moving the trial isn\u2019t possible, Musk\u2019s lawyers want it postponed until negative publicity regarding the billionaire\u2019s purchase of Twitter has died down.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the last several months, the local media have saturated this district with biased and negative stories about Mr Musk,\u201d attorney Alex Spiro wrote in a court filing. Those news items have personally blamed Musk for recent layoffs at Twitter, Spiro wrote, and have charged that the job cuts may have even violated laws.<\/p>\n
The shareholders\u2019 attorneys emphasized the last-minute timing of the request, saying, \u201cMusk\u2019s concerns are unfounded and his motion is meritless.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Northern District of California is the proper venue for this lawsuit and where it has been actively litigated for over four years,\u201d attorney Nicholas Porritt wrote in an email.<\/p>\n
The filing by Musk\u2019s attorneys also notes that Twitter has laid off about 1,000 residents in the San Francisco area since he purchased the company in late October.<\/p>\n
\u201cA substantial portion of the jury pool … is likely to hold a personal and material bias against Mr Musk as a result of recent layoffs at one of his companies as individual prospective jurors \u2014 or their friends and relatives \u2014 may have been personally impacted,\u201d the filing said.<\/p>\n
Musk has also been criticized by San Francisco\u2019s mayor and other local officials for the job cuts, the filing said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (National Times) \u2014 Elon Musk has urged a federal judge to shift a trial in a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco because he says negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him. Instead, in a filing submitted late Friday \u2014 less than two weeks before the trial was set to begin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n