Elon Musk wants to move the trial out of San Francisco because of  unfairness

Elon Musk has urged a federal judge to shift a trial in a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco because he says negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him

Instead, in a filing submitted late on Friday – less than two weeks before the trial was set to begin on 17 January – Musk’s lawyers argue it should be moved to the federal court in the western district of Texas

That district includes the state capital of Austin, which is where Musk relocated his electric car company, Tesla, in late 2021

The shareholder lawsuit stems from Musk’s tweets in August 2018 when he said he had sufficient financing to take Tesla private at 420 a share – an announcement that caused heavy volatility in Tesla’s share price

In a victory for the shareholders last spring, Judge Edward Chen ruled that Musk’s tweets were false and reckless

If moving the trial isn’t possible, Musk’s lawyers want it postponed until negative publicity regarding the billionaire’s purchase of Twitter has died down

“For the last several months, the local media have saturated this district with biased and negative stories about Mr Musk,” attorney Alex Spiro wrote in a court filing Those news items have personally blamed Musk for recent layoffs at Twitter, Spiro wrote, and have charged that the job cuts may have even violated laws

“For the last several months, the local media have saturated this district with biased and negative stories about Mr Musk,” attorney Alex Spiro wrote in a court filing Those news items have personally blamed Musk for recent layoffs at Twitter, Spiro wrote, and have charged that the job cuts may have even violated laws

“The northern district of California is the proper venue for this lawsuit and where it has been actively litigated for over four years,” attorney Nicholas Porritt wrote in an email

The filing by Musks lawyers also mentions that since he bought Twitter in late October, the company has laid off about 1,000 people in the San Francisco area Due to recent layoffs at one of Mr Musks companies, a sizable portion of the jury pool is likely to hold a personal and material bias against Mr Musk because individual prospective jurors - or their friends and relatives - may have been personally impacted, the filing stated According to the filing, the mayor of San Francisco and other local officials have also criticised Musk for the layoffs

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