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The jury trial in the class action lawsuit by Tesla investors against Elon Musk gave opening statements today in federal court in San Francisco. The plaintiff’s attorney, Nicholas Porritt, told the jury that the lawsuit was filed “because Elon Musk, the chairman and CEO of Tesla, lied, and he Not in court today but you’ll see him sitting in the witness box…and his lies caused the public to lose millions of dollars like Glen Littleton “
Pollitt noted that Judge Edward Chen ruled in August 2018 that Musk’s statement that he had “secured funds” to take Tesla private was false and reckless. bottom. The lawsuit is being heard in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
“Every word, every part of this tweet must be assumed to be false,” Politt said, because of the judge’s ruling and the instructions given to the jury.
“There was no dispute that Elon Musk lied,” Politt said. “And there was no question that Tesla investors were hurt by these lies. How were they hurt? We lost a lot of money in a short period of 10 days, ending March 17th.”
“Tesla stock skyrocketed. Millions of shares were bought,” Poritt said after Musk’s false claim that “funds were secured.” “But then the stock price crashed almost as fast as it rose, and millions of dollars were lost when his lies were exposed. Your problem, jury, is Elon Musk and Tesla, and to decide whether its board of directors should be held. He is responsible for the injury and harm caused by his lies.”
Musk’s defense argued that the false statements were simply “terminology errors” and were not material to investors.
The main plaintiff lost most of the life-saving money
Lead plaintiff Glen Littleton, 71, testified today after his opening statement. He is a self-employed investor from Kansas City.
Polritt told jurors in his opening statement that Littleton “had great faith in Tesla and Elon Musk. He believed in technology and stood by the environmental message. The pain he suffered on August 7 and the I will explain the upset,” he said. The savings, the fruit of 50 years of work, were all but wiped out by Elon Musk’s lies and tweets that ‘the funds were secured’.”
Polritt described another witness who will testify during the trial as a hard-working product manager and invested as much as he could for his retirement. I figured it would be a good time to buy Tesla stock, and he lost thousands of dollars he couldn’t afford to lose when his Aug. 7 tweet came out false,” Polritt said.
Collectively, the class action lawsuit seeks billions of dollars in damages. Politt said thousands of investors lost money because of Musk’s fake tweets.
The lawsuit primarily concerns two tweets made by Musk on August 7, 2018. first time “We are considering taking Tesla private for $420. Funding secured.” The second The tweet said, “Investor support confirmed. The only reason this isn’t certain is that it depends on the shareholder vote.”
Pollitt said Musk tweeted while driving his car to the airport and chose a suggested $420 stock price as a cannabis-related joke. It was no joke for Tesla and other Tesla investors, no joke for the millions of investors who rely on true information in the market to buy or sell stocks,” Polritt said. .
