Musk rarely loses a lawsuit, being ruled responsible for "misleading investors" during the acquisition of Twitter

A federal jury in San Francisco ruled local time that American entrepreneur Elon Musk intentionally lowered the stock price of Twitter (now renamed X) during his acquisition in 2022, "misleading investors," and is responsible for this. However, the jury dismissed the fraud charges against Musk for "conspiring" to mislead investors.

The lawsuit was filed before Musk took over Twitter. The jury was asked to determine whether Musk's two tweets posted in May 2022 and his comments in a related podcast constituted "intentional fraud against Twitter shareholders." After nearly four days of deliberation, the nine-member jury ruled that Musk was responsible for "misleading investors" with the two tweets but that his comments in the podcast did not constitute misleading, and he did not intentionally "conspire" to defraud investors.

This ruling is a rare defeat for Musk, and his legal team stated they would appeal. Musk announced the acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion in April 2022 and announced the termination of the acquisition agreement on July 8. Twitter sued Musk on July 12, accusing him of refusing to complete the acquisition as agreed, causing significant losses to Twitter.