Elon Musk was ordered by a U.S. judge to face most of a lawsuit claiming he defrauded former Twitter shareholders last year by waiting too long to disclose that he had invested in the social media company, which he later bought and renamed X.
In a decision made public on Monday, U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter said shareholders in the proposed class action could try to prove that Musk intended to defraud them by waiting 11 days past a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission deadline to reveal he had bought 5% of Twitter's shares.
Musk's lawyers argued that their client was "one of the busiest people on the planet," and that any disclosure failure was "inadvertent."
So we're pretty much already at the point of admitting that there was a failure of disclosure. There must be some pretty strong evidence against him.
Well shit, thats all they had to say! Little guy is just so busy doing his silly little jobs that he’s just immune from the law 🥺
Can’t wait for the judges to be paid off for this one
Your honor, I'm just too busy to be held accountable for my actions or inaction.
I'd pull up his twitter history from the days in question and I bet we can calculate hours of time he found to be able to tweet
That quote reads like he is the only one at the company. I could see using that argument for my business, as there literally is only me except one day a week my wife watches the shop for 3 hours.
Does he not have any accountants?
Does he not have any accountants?
Probably fired em. When you have more money than nearly the rest of the world combined, you don't need to keep track of things like "finances" and "books".
He bought the shares for his private account, not on behalf of his companies. There was no reason for accountants at his companies to get involved, they probably don't even have access to his private account.
Elon surely has a personal accountant that handles private transactions. He is not logging into these websites on his own to make large purchases. Someone else knew about it, and likely that there should be a disclosure for a large purchase like that.
He would have his own accountants for his private accounts…
Failure to disclose is objective fact. The circumstances of which will either be aggravating or mitigating to whatever fine is tossed his way.
I sincerely doubt someone like Musk, someone who's entire life revolves around the acquisition of wealth and the utilization of investment funds, can use "I was too busy and forgot to perform regulatory obligations!" defense.
This isn't really about a fine. Musk is being sued by other another company. They claim that Musk saved $200m on his Twitter purchase by failing to disclose in time. In other words he bought some shares that would have cost him more if he had disclosed.
Of course his savings was someone else's loss of potential profit, and they are suing Musk to get that profit back.
i mean it wouldn't be too hard to prove anyway. if he had prepared beforehand and bought the shares through shell companies it would have been harder to prove but if he just bought them outright it's just " did you have the share? did you disclose them?" and now his lawyers hate him (who am i kidding they already hated him)
I'm not familiar with the law, but it seems like they have to prove musk intended to defraud them to win, no? So "I forgot" might be enough for musk to escape this, if the other party can't come up with other evidence his intent was to defraud.
I don't know what I'm talking about so this could be completely wrong.
Yes, many laws require a proof of criminal intent, although the nuances of that can be tricky.
Classic example: a convicted felon named Bob is charged with possessing a firearm while a felon. You are the prosecutor. You must prove the following to establish intent:
- Bob knows he is a felon (typically trivial).
- Bob knows he possessed the object at issue.
Meanwhile, you don't need to prove these:
- Bob knows felons can't possess firearms.
- Bob knows the object at issue is a firearm.
Because US law defines many things as "firearms" which zero people would agree count as firearms in common parlance, number 4 is a very common reason to go to jail. For example, spent shell casings count as firearms, legally, so you can go to prison for possessing a lamp incorporating a spent shell casing into the design for aesthetic purposes.
This isn't a criminal trial, so intent doesn't matter so much. The purpose of the trial will be to determine whether the plaintiffs lost money, and if so how much he owes them.
I get that Im not a lawyer, but how is that a real defense? Surely thats worse than admitting fault and trying for a deal, right?
I'm sorry officer, I didn't know I couldn't do that.
If it gets to trial at all, at least it'll be a short one. Seems now the only issue being questioned is whether the wealthy really can just flat out ignore the law, or if they have to at least pretend to obey it.
This is a civil lawsuit. The only question is how much money he owes the plaintiffs.
LMAO at the weird nerd who thinks Musk will notice them if they downvote everyone in the thread.
So fuckin' funny.
Your honour, I was too busy smoking weed and playing video games to pay attention to the law
Ah, the Sam Bankman-Fried Defense.
"Stop! You have violated the law! Pay the court a fine or serve your sentence. Your stolen goods are now forfeit."
