China News Service, January 18 (CNN) reported that on the 17th local time, the San Francisco Federal Court formally selected jurors for Tesla CEO Musk's tweets four years ago. A shareholder lawsuit went to trial.
Data map: Tesla CEO Musk
According to reports, Musk tweeted in 2018 that he was considering taking Tesla private at a price of $420 per share, and added that "funding is in place." This statement caused stock price fluctuations and was sued by shareholders.
It turns out that while Musk did talk to executives at the Saudi sovereign wealth fund about the money he would need to take Tesla private, the money simply wasn't "in place."
Musk's remarks caused Tesla's stock price to fluctuate violently. Shareholders believed that Musk acted recklessly and caused them to lose huge amounts of money, so they filed a lawsuit in court.
Musk's tweets also previously sparked a civil lawsuit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which has demanded executives tell the truth to protect investors and sought to strip Musk of his job as Tesla's CEO.
But the SEC finally reached a settlement with Musk. Musk and Tesla each paid a fine of $20 million. Musk also gave up the title of chairman of the company and retained the title of CEO.
Previously, Musk's lawyers believed that a survey of 200 potential jurors in the San Francisco area found that 116 of them had a negative view of Musk and only 26 had a positive view of him.
Therefore, he requested that the shareholder lawsuit be transferred to Texas, where Tesla is headquartered.
But the federal district judge in charge of the case rejected that request last week.
More than four years in the making, the lawsuit only went to trial this week.
The case is scheduled to be debated in San Francisco Federal Court on the 18th local time.
The jury trial could continue until February 3, the judge said.
Musk is likely to be called to testify at trial.
In addition, Musk is still awaiting a judge's decision in another "2018 Tesla compensation case" in a Delaware court.