Elon Musk has urged a federal judge to shift a trial in a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco because he says negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him.
Instead, in a filing submitted late Friday less than two
weeks before the trial was set to begin on January 17 Musk's lawyers argue that
the trial should be moved to the federal court in the western district of
Texas. That district includes the state capital of Austin, which is where Musk
relocated his electric car company, Tesla, in late 2021.
If a move isn't possible, Musk's lawyers want the trial
postponed until negative publicity regarding Musk's purchase of Twitter has
died down.
For the last several months, the local media have saturated
this district with biased and negative stories about Mr. Musk, attorney Alex
Spiro wrote in a court filing. Those items have personally blamed Musk for
recent layoffs at Twitter, Spiro wrote, and have charged that the job cuts may
have even violated laws.
The shareholder lawsuit stems from Musk's tweets in August
2018 when he said he had sufficient financing to take Tesla private at $420 a
share, an announcement that caused heavy volatility in Tesla's share price.
The shareholders' attorneys did not immediately respond to a
request for comment.
In a victory for the shareholders last spring, Judge Edward
Chen ruled that Musk's tweets were false and reckless.
The filing by his attorneys also notes that Twitter has laid
off about 1,000 residents in the San Francisco area since he purchased the
company in late October.
A substantial portion of the jury pool ... is likely to hold
a personal and material bias against Mr. Musk as a result of recent layoffs at
one of his companies as individual prospective jurors or their friends and
relatives may have been personally impacted, the filing said.
Musk has also been criticized by San Francisco's mayor and
other local officials for the job cuts, the filing said.