Lawyers for Tesla and Elon Musk have asked a federal judge in San Francisco to relocate or postpone a pending trial from northern California to west Texas, citing “local negativity” toward Musk. According to reports, they will be unable to find an impartial jury.
In addition to Musk, other board members of Tesla, current and former, are on trial in a shareholder class action lawsuit alleging Musk’s manipulation of Tesla’s stock in 2018 after his tweet that he was looking at spin off his electric vehicle company at $420 per share and has also “secured funds” to do so. Investors suing the company said that this tweet caused wild swings in Tesla’s stock price and cost them billions of dollars.
According to a late Friday filing by his attorneys, the billionaire proposed holding the trial in western Texas, where, about a year ago, Tesla relocated its headquarters from northern California to Austin.
A significant portion San Francisco area’s jury pool is likely to have a personal and material bias as a result of recent layoffs and individual prospective jurors, or their friends and relatives, could may have been impacted, the lawyers wrote. The trial is scheduled to begin on January 17.
Musk has clashed with Twitter’s hometown of San Francisco after converting a portion of the company’s Market Street headquarters into makeshift bedrooms, which may have violated city building codes. The billionaire has also chastised Mayor London Breed for failing to address the city’s fentanyl crisis.
In late October, he purchased Twitter for $44 billion and appointed himself CEO. Tesla’s corporate headquarters will be relocated to Austin in December 2021, but the company will maintain a strong presence in California, he said. The company stated in a blog post this week that it has 47,000 employees in the state.
Musk’s lawyers believe that western Texas would be a more equitable venue than northern California. The upcoming trial and jury will decide whether Musk’s tweets influenced shareholders, if and how they affected the share price of the electric company, and whether Tesla or its executives should be held accountable and pay damages.
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