Tesla Investors Defeated by Musk Make Longshot Bid for a New Trial

© Bloomberg Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., departs from court for the SolarCity trial in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S., on Monday, July 12, 2021. Musk was cool but combative as he testified in a Delaware courtroom that Tesla Inc.'s more than $2 billion acquisition of SolarCity in 2016 wasn't a bailout of the struggling solar provider.

(Bloomberg) -- Investors who sued Elon Musk for fraud and lost a trial have asked a judge to overturn the jury verdict and order a redo.

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Jurors in San Francisco federal court spent just two hours last month deliberating before clearing the Tesla Inc. chief executive officer of claims he defrauded investors when he tweeted 4 1/2 years ago that he was considering taking the company private and had “funding secured” to make the deal happen.

Read More: ‘Teflon’ Elon Wins Again as Jury Rejects Tweet Fraud Claims 

The attempt by shareholders to get that decision thrown out is improbable because courts typically defer heavily to jury verdicts. Lawyers for investors argue the evidence they presented from almost a dozen witnesses “overwhelmingly established” that Musk’s tweets were important to ordinary investors — and that Musk’s lawyers failed to rebut it. 

The investors’ lawyers called on US District Judge Edward Chen to order a new trial focused on “only on the issues necessary while avoiding confusion and prejudice,” according to the filing.

Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk, didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

The case is In re Tesla Inc. Securities Litigation, 18-cv-04865, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

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