Elon Musk was found not guilty by a California jury on Friday on whether tweets claiming he would delist his company Tesla in 2018 violated stock exchange laws.
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The jury came to this verdict quickly on Friday after three weeks of hearings, triggered by lawsuits from investors who felt harmed by the messages from the conglomerate.
The latter had surprised markets on Aug. 7, 2018 by saying on Twitter that he wanted to take his automaker private at a price of $420 a share, up 23% from the previous day’s closing price, to ensure that the financing was “secure”.
The stock surged, climbing 11% on the day before declining in the days that followed.
Investors who then bet on the action falling, “short sellers,” believed that Elon Musk broke stock exchange laws by presenting misleading information that caused the action to rise and demanded compensation.
The judge responsible for the case, Edward Chen, had already concluded that the tweets were in fact misleading and that the entrepreneur had acted “irresponsibly”.
The jury had to determine whether the tweets fraudulently inflated the lawsuit and, if so, how much the plaintiffs were affected.
They then also had to determine whether members of Tesla’s board of directors could be held accountable.
With the negative answer to the first questions, the jurors quickly relieved Elon Musk and Tesla.
The multi-billionaire, who spearheaded the process at the outset, had assured that he “never” tried to mislead investors. He genuinely thought he would have access to enough funding, even if that meant selling stakes in his other company, SpaceX, for example, he said, but admitted he had no firm commitments from partners.