An Elon Musk tweet declaring he had the financing to take Tesla private in 2018 caused billions of dollars in investor damages after the deal collapsed, according to estimates presented on Tuesday at a trial examining the haphazard handling of the buyout proposal.
The mind-bending estimates laid out by two experts hired by attorneys representing Tesla shareholders underscored the challenges facing a nine-person jury as the three-week trial winds down this week. US District Judge Edward Chen expects to turn the case over to the jury on Friday.
Depending on the verdict, Musk and the electric automaker that he runs could be facing more financial fallout for his unpredictable behaviour on the Twitter platform, which he now owns. Without acknowledging any wrongdoing, Musk and Tesla reached a US$40 million settlement with securities regulators after Musk’s troublesome tweets in August 2018.
In this class-action lawsuit on behalf of Tesla shareholders, the jurors must first determine whether two tweets that Musk abruptly posted on August 7, 2018 steered Tesla investors in the wrong direction. If the jury decides to hold Musk accountable for the tweets that Chen has already deemed falsehoods, they will face what may be an even more formidable task — trying to calculate how much Musk — one of the world’s richest people — and Tesla should have to pay for the misleading tweets.