Elon Musk says he can’t get a fair trial in San Francisco, requests Tesla shareholder fraud trial be moved to Texas 

The billionaire who runs each Tesla and Twitter proposed the trial be held in western Texas, the place Tesla moved its headquarters to Austin from northern California a few 12 months in the past, in accordance with a submitting by his attorneys late Friday.

A considerable portion of the San Francisco-area jury pool “is more likely to maintain a private and materials bias towards Mr. Musk on account of current layoffs at considered one of his corporations as particular person potential jurors — or their buddies and relations — could have been personally impacted,” the attorneys wrote. “The prevailing baseline bias has been compounded, expanded, and bolstered by the destructive and inflammatory native publicity surrounding the occasions.”

Traders suing Tesla and Musk, its chief government officer, argue that his August 2018 tweets about taking the electric-car maker non-public with “funding secured” had been “indisputably false” and price them billions of {dollars} by spurring wild swings in Tesla’s inventory value. Musk has maintained that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund had agreed to assist his try to take Tesla non-public. The trial is ready to start January 17. 

“To be clear, this movement isn’t being introduced just because Mr. Musk has been the topic of destructive information protection. Mr. Musk has been a public determine for greater than a decade and acknowledges that being the topic of destructive and even unfair media consideration comes with the territory,” in accordance with the submitting. “The native media and political institution have tried to depict Mr. Musk as personally answerable for inflicting materials financial hurt to the numerous variety of potential jurors impacted by the layoffs and to the Metropolis of San Francisco as a complete.” 

Musk has sparred with Twitter’s hometown of San Francisco after turning some area on the firm’s Market Avenue headquarters into makeshift bedrooms, a doable violation of metropolis constructing codes. Musk has additionally slammed Mayor London Breed over the town’s fentanyl disaster. 

He purchased Twitter for $44 billion in late October and put in himself as chief government officer. After Tesla’s company headquarters moved to Austin in December 2021 the corporate nonetheless has a formidable presence in California. In a weblog put up this week, the corporate stated it has 47,000 workers within the state. 

Musk’s attorneys assume western Texas would supply a fairer venue than northern California.

“Mr. Musk is way likelier to obtain a good trial within the Western District of Texas,” they wrote. “Mr. Musk has not been the topic of overwhelming, pervasive, and inflammatory press protection by the native media within the Western District of Texas, like he has on this district. Texas information retailers publish far fewer tales about Mr. Musk.”