Elon Musk, the richest person and CEO of Tesla and Twitter, is set to be the star witness in a jury trial in a federal court in San Francisco over tweets he made four and a half years ago about a plan to take Tesla private with "funding secured." The trial begins Tuesday, Jan. 18, and will last three weeks.

Bloomberg reports that the trial results from a class-action lawsuit filed by shareholders who claim Musk lied in his statement, causing them significant losses due to wild stock price swings over ten days before the plan was scrapped.

Lawyers for the shareholders will attempt to demonstrate that Musk's tweets were false and reckless, causing significant financial harm to the plaintiffs.

A Potential Blow for Musk

Experts say potential damages, in this case, could be in the billions of dollars, which would be a significant blow to Musk, whose fortune has plummeted from a peak of $340 billion in November 2021 to recently suffering a record-breaking $200 billion loss.

Musk has already been hampered by a pretrial ruling by US District Judge Edward Chen that the tweets were reckless and false.

Musk has said in court filings that he may call on others who can vouch for the take-private plan. Musk plans to include friend and confidant Larry Ellison, executives at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and private equity firm Silver Lake Management to counter allegations of deception.

These individuals may be able to provide testimony that will help clear Musk's name and demonstrate that the take-private plan was a viable option at the time.

Further Ramifications

This trial will be a major litmus test for Musk and Tesla, with significant financial and reputational ramifications. The outcome of this case will almost certainly be closely followed by investors, shareholders, and the general public.

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If the plaintiffs' lawsuit is successful, it could lead to increased scrutiny of Musk's statements and actions in the future and set a precedent for similar cases involving public statements made by CEOs.

Tesla Ad Fake

In a stunning revelation, a senior engineer at Tesla has testified that a 2016 video used to promote the company's self-driving technology was staged to show capabilities that the system did not have.

The video, which came out in October 2016 and was promoted on Twitter by CEO Elon Musk as proof that "Tesla drives itself," is still on the company's website.

As first reported by Reuters, Ashik Elluswamy, the director of Autopilot software at Tesla, stated that the Model X featured in the video was not driving itself with the technology that Tesla had deployed at the time.

Elluswamy confirmed and explained how the video was made in a transcript of a deposition that was used as proof in a lawsuit against Tesla over the death of a former Apple engineer in a crash in 2018.

The video carries a tagline claiming, "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons."

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