Elon Musk 'deeply appreciative' as Jury finds him not guilty over Tesla tweet fraud claims

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that he is “deeply appreciative” of the jury verdict after he was found not liable for investors' losses in the much-talked-about Tesla trials. The billionaire was dragged to court by the investors of Tesla over his 2018 tweet in which he claimed that he had “secured” the private funding for the electric automotive company, the Washington Post reported. On Friday, a nine-person jury found that investors failed to prove that Musk’s tweet about taking Tesla private at $420 hurt them financially. The tech mogul took to Twitter to rejoice in his victory on Friday, (local time). 

“Thank goodness, the wisdom of the people has prevailed! I am deeply appreciative of the jury’s unanimous finding of innocence in the Tesla 420 take-private case,” Musk wrote on Twitter. The Friday verdict came as a relief to the SpaceX CEO, who is already engulfed in several other class action lawsuits over the erratic decisions he made after formally taking over Twitter back in October last year. The social media networking giant is also facing a lawsuit for not paying their rent in the San Francisco office. 

Thank goodness, the wisdom of the people has prevailed!

I am deeply appreciative of the jury’s unanimous finding of innocence in the Tesla 420 take-private case.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

What was the lawsuit all about? 

According to The Washington Post, Plaintiff Glen Littleton and fellow investors filed a class action lawsuit against Musk and Tesla’s other board of directors. The Lawsuit was filed over his 2018 tweet and the plaintiff alleged that Musk’s proclamation was false and it constituted fraud. The investors claimed that they faced immense losses because of panicked sales after 10 days following the tweet. On the other hand, Musk’s lawyer Alex Sipro argued that Musk’s tweet did not cover the entirety of what the matter was and claimed that it did not constitute fraud.

The verdict comes after a three-week trial that pitted shareholders against Musk. The billionaire claimed that his tweet was not comprehensive and blamed it on the limited character count of the social media networking site. “Obviously there’s a limit when you have 240 characters to what you can say. You can, of course, be far more detailed in a legal motion, and everyone on Twitter understands that,” the Tesla CEO told the courtroom in the January Tesla trials. Hence the Friday verdict came as a breath of fresh air for the SpaceX CEO.