Elon Musk was misleading in his public statements during a crucial period of his 2022 Twitter takeover, a jury has found.
After two days of deliberations, a jury in San Francisco federal court decided in a unanimous verdict against the tech titan, who was sued by a group of Twitter investors arguing they had relied on his statements.
While testifying in court earlier this month, Musk argued that he did not mislead investors and that people simply read too much into his public comments and tweets.
The jury instead found that certain of his public claims of problems in Twitter's user metrics, and that he was possibly backing out of the $44bn acquisition deal, were intentionally misleading.
Lawyers for Musk did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did lawyers for the investors, led by Brian Belgrave, a small-business owner from Oregon.
This is not the first time Musk has found himself in legal trouble for his tweets. But he was able to beat a 2023 lawsuit brought by Tesla shareholders claiming the CEO had misled them with posts about the car company.
In Friday's verdict, the San Francisco jury found that Musk had artificially lowered the price of Twitter's stock by a range of roughly $8 per share to $3 per share between May and October 2022 because of his public statements.
That could mean each investor in the class is poised to receive thousands of dollars in damages for their losses.
Monte Mann, a trial attorney focused on business litigation at Armstrong Teasdale, said the verdict against Musk "sends a clear message".
"If you move the market with your words, you own the consequences."
Musk began around May 2022 to tweet about Twitter's purported issues with fake accounts, or "bots," and said the deal was "on hold" before announcing he wanted out of the deal entirely.
Twitter took Musk to court in order to force the multi-billionaire to abide by the deal, and in early October Musk did so, taking over Twitter at the originally agreed upon price. The following year he renamed the social media platform X.
Those months proved to be financially damaging for Twitter investors like Belgrave, who bought and sold shares of the company during that time.
Belgrave told the jury earlier this month that he sold thousands of Twitter shares in July 2022, believing that Musk was no longer going to buy the platform because of his public posts and comments.
Belgrave's sale price was less than what he'd purchased the shares for a few months earlier, and significantly less than the $54.20 per share Musk eventually paid.
"I got screwed," Belgrave said. "I got cheated."
During Musk's testimony before the jury, he was more combative with lawyers representing the class of investors.
He eventually refused to answer questions with a simple "yes" or "no", arguing multiple times that the lawyers were trying to mislead the jury.
"If this was a trial on whether I've made stupid tweets, I'd say I'm guilty," Musk conceded at one point.
