Musk’s tweets on stock sales land Tesla in court

18 Dec, 2021 07:32

Electric car maker Tesla is facing a lawsuit over CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter posts, which dragged down the company’s stock prices.

Tesla investor David Wagner filed a lawsuit with the Delaware Court of Chancery on Thursday, calling for access to Tesla’s internal documents relating to Musk’s tweets that mention the company.

Most notably, the investor wants access to records on Musk’s November 6 poll in which he asked his followers whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock.

In 2018, Musk settled a lawsuit by the US Securities and Exchange Commission over a tweet on the possibility of making Tesla private. After that tweet, the company’s share price plunged. In the settlement, Musk pledged to have the company’s lawyers pre-approve his tweets related to Tesla. The new lawsuit seeks to find out whether Musk abided by this agreement with his most recent tweets.

Wagner’s lawsuit was sparked by the drop in Tesla’s stock price that followed Musk’s Twitter poll, in which the majority of his followers voted ‘yes’ to selling his stocks. Tesla shares have lost nearly one-fourth of their value since then, while Musk has been sticking to the poll results and has sold nearly $14 billion worth of shares so far.

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