🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Musk’s loss follows a prior win and targets specific tweets

• The jury verdict adds a legal setback for Musk after a 2023 courtroom win over his “funding secured” tweets about taking Tesla private 1.
• Jurors held him liable for two May 2022 posts about the Twitter deal. One said the deal was “temporarily on hold” while he checked whether bots were under 5% of users. Another said bots could be “much” higher than 20% and the takeover would not proceed unless Twitter’s chief executive proved bots were under 5% 2.
• In testimony, Musk called the “on hold” post a “mistake” and said it “may not be my wisest tweet,” adding that a trial over it would confirm that view 3.
• The fight played out alongside earlier questions about Twitter metrics. Twitter paid $809.5 million in 2021 to settle claims that it overstated its growth rate and monthly user figures 4.

A rare trial verdict could change how executives tweet

• A plaintiffs’ lawyer said the ruling speaks to executives whose social media posts can move markets and goes “right to the heart of Wall Street” 3.
• Musk opted for a jury trial, an uncommon path. About 16 shareholder class-action suits have reached a trial verdict since 1995 1.
• Many companies settle to avoid cost or uncertainty, but this outcome may push other shareholder groups to ask for juries 1.
• The case also raises corporate governance concerns. Boards at Musk-led companies have struggled to enforce the 2018 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) settlement that required pre-approval for his market-moving tweets 5.