American billionaire Elon Musk was deceptive in his public statements during the key period of the Twitter takeover in 2022, a jury has concluded.
The BBC writes about this.
After two days of deliberations, a federal court jury in San Francisco unanimously ruled against the tech mogul, who was sued by a group of Twitter investors.
Speaking in court earlier this month, Musk insisted that he had not misled investors and that people had simply taken his public comments and tweets too literally.
However, the jury decided that some of his statements about problems with Twitterʼs user metrics, as well as hints at a possible exit from the $44 billion deal, were intentionally misleading.
In Fridayʼs ruling, a jury found that Musk artificially depressed Twitterʼs stock price by about $3 to $8 per share between May and October 2022 through his public statements. That means each investor in the class action could receive thousands of dollars in damages.
- In May 2022, Musk began tweeting about problems with fake accounts ("bots") and stated that the purchase deal had been "paused", and later announced his intention to walk away from it entirely.
- Twitter then sued to force him to honor the deal, and in early October, Musk finally completed the purchase at the original price. The following year, he renamed the platform X.
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