On Monday, a federal judge dismissed Elon Musk’s efforts to overturn a jury verdict that concluded he had defrauded investors during his acquisition of Twitter. Despite the findings, Musk was not held accountable for one of the disputed tweets.
US District Judge Charles Breyer, presiding in San Francisco, also rejected Musk’s attempt to dissolve the class of investors and approved their request for prejudgment interest.
Musk’s legal representatives have yet to respond to requests for comment.
The verdict on March 20 determined that Musk attempted to lower Twitter’s stock value to either renegotiate the terms of his expansive $44 billion acquisition deal in 2022 or withdraw from it entirely.
Jurors determined Musk was responsible for tweets from May 13 and May 17, 2022, where he cast doubt on the number of fake and spam accounts, often referred to as bots, on Twitter.
Breyer found “substantial evidence of falsity” in the May 13 tweet, which caused Twitter’s stock price to fall significantly, but said a lack of market reaction to the May 17 tweet meant Musk was not liable for it.
A lawyer for the plaintiffs had estimated in March following the verdict that damages could total about $2.5 billion.