Elon Musk Doesn't Appeal to Potential Jurors part - 2

But such is litigation, where good strategy can mean hurting your client’s feelings Even when your client is Elon Musk Musk has developed a reputation, from previous cases in which he has testified under oath, as a feisty witness who relishes confrontations with opposing counsel

Nevertheless, Tesla and Musk are heading into next week’s trial at a disadvantage, according to a report from my colleagues Tom Hals and Jody Godoy, thanks to Chen’s ruling last April that Musk’s 2018 tweets about the purported deal to go private were false and misleading

Levi Korsinskys shareholder attorneys need only persuade jurors that Musk acted intentionally, that his comments affected Teslas stock price, and that investors suffered financial losses as a result One law professor remarked that if this trial were a baseball game, the investors would be starting with runners on base

Last week, even as Chen finalized the instructions he plans to give jurors, Tesla’s lawyers tried to disrupt the game In a Jan 6 motion, Quinn Emanuel asked Chen to move the trial to Austin, Texas, where Tesla is now headquartered after ditching California in 2021 Defense lawyers argued that since Musk’s Twitter takeover last October, press coverage of the CEO has been relentless – and relentlessly negative

Musk is accustomed to intense media attention, Quinn Emanuel argued, but the volume and tone of coverage of his management decisions at Twitter, including deep job cuts, was unprecedented Quinn Emanuel told Chen that the jury pool was so inflamed by “recent events and biased local media coverage” that Tesla simply could not get a fair trial in Chen’s Northern California courtroom At the very least, they said, Chen should delay the trial to allow passions about Musk to cool

Shareholder lawyers refuted those arguments in a brief filed on Wednesday Levi Korsinsky pointed out, as an initial matter, that Tesla hadn’t shown press coverage of Musk to be inaccurate or even biased Accurate reporting about Musk’s management decisions at Twitter, the brief said, has no bearing on whether jurors can fairly decide a case based on 2018 tweets that were barely even mentioned in recent coverage of Musk

“For better or worse, Musk is a celebrity who garners attention from the media around the globe,” Levi Korsinsky argued If ‘negative’ attention was all that was required to disqualify a jury pool, Musk would effectively be untriable before a jury given his knack for attracting ‘negative’ coverage”

Quinn Emanuel’s last chance to persuade Chen to take the drastic step of transferring the case was Thursday’s reply brief Levi Korsinsky had already referred to the jurors’ questionnaires, arguing that only a few members of the jury pool even knew any Twitter employees

Quinn’s brief dove more deeply into the jury pool’s answers to argue that prospective jurors have such deeply engrained hostility toward Musk that they can’t fairly judge the Tesla case

The jury pool believes that Mr Musk is untrustworthy,” the brief said It also “disapproves of Mr Musk’s conduct on Twitter” Those are tough admissions to make about your client We’ll find out after next week’s trial if Quinn was right