Elon Musk misled Twitter investors, jury finds

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 rou