Why Elon Musk Claimed He Can’t Get a Fair Trial in California

Elon Musk has asked a federal judge to move a trial in a shareholder lawsuit from San Francisco because he says negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him.

Instead, Musk’s attorneys argue in a filing filed late Friday — less than two weeks before the April 17 trial. That county includes the state capital of Austin, where the is located musk relocated his electric car company, Teslaend of 2021.

The shareholder lawsuit stems from Musk’s tweets in August 2018 when he said he had sufficient funds to take Tesla private for $420 (roughly Rs. 34,000) per share – an announcement that caused severe volatility in the company’s share price Tesla led.

In a victory for shareholders last spring, Judge Edward Chen ruled that Musk’s tweets were false and reckless.

If the trial can’t be postponed, Musk’s lawyers want it postponed until the negative publicity surrounding the billionaire’s Twitter purchase has subsided.

“For the past few months, local media has saturated this county with biased and negative stories about Mr. Musk,” attorney Alex Spiro wrote in a court filing. The news has Musk personally blamed for Twitter’s recent layoffs, Spiro wrote, accusing that the job cuts may even have broken the law.

Stressing the short-term timing of the filing, shareholders’ attorneys said, “Musk’s concerns are unfounded and his filing is unfounded.”

“The Northern District of California is the proper forum for this lawsuit and has been actively litigated there for over four years,” attorney Nicholas Porritt wrote in an email.

Musk’s attorneys’ filing also notes that Twitter has fired about 1,000 residents in the San Francisco area since buying the company in late October.

“A significant portion of the jury pool … is likely to harbor a personal and material bias against Mr. Musk as a result of recent firings at one of his companies, as individual potential jurors — or their friends and relatives — may have been personally influenced,” it said in the file.

Musk was also criticized by the mayor of San Francisco and other local officials for the job cuts, the filing said.