Jury Finds Elon Musk Misled Twitter Investors Before $44 Billion Takeover — Damages Could Reach $2.6 Billion

A nine-member San Francisco jury on Friday found that Elon Musk made materially false and misleading statements to Twitter shareholders in the weeks before his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform in 2022, according to a landmark verdict that could cost the world's wealthiest man as much as $2.6 billion in damages. The verdict, reached after nearly four days of deliberation following a three-week trial, found Musk liable for two tweets in May 2022 in which he claimed the Twitter deal was "temporarily on hold" and later that it "cannot move forward" until he received data about bot and spam accounts on the platform — statements that drove down Twitter's stock price and caused investors who sold during that period to lose significant sums.

The civil class-action lawsuit, Pampena v. Musk, was originally filed in October 2022 just before Musk completed his acquisition at $54.20 per share, after initially attempting to back out of the deal citing concerns about fake accounts on the platform. Plaintiffs alleged that Musk's public statements were calculated to drive down the stock price and allow him to renegotiate or escape the deal, while investors who sold their shares between his original April 2022 announcement and the eventual October 2022 closing suffered substantial losses during the period of uncertainty Musk created.

The jury did not go as far as plaintiffs had sought. Jurors acquitted Musk of claims that he engaged in a deliberate "scheme" to defraud shareholders, and found that comments he made during a May 2022 podcast appearance were not fraudulent. Nonetheless, attorneys for the plaintiffs said the jury's award of between $3 and $8 per share per day amounts to approximately $2.1 billion in stock damages, with an additional $500 million in options damages — totaling up to $2.6 billion depending on the final class size once all members submit their claims.

Musk's attorneys at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan released a statement characterizing the verdict as "a bump in the road," saying: "We view today's verdict, where the jury found both for and against the plaintiffs and found no fraud scheme, as a bump in the road. And we look forward to vindication on appeal." Musk's net worth is estimated at approximately $300 billion, making the potential damage award a financially manageable but politically significant blow for the man who currently serves as a senior adviser to President Trump as head of the Department of Government Efficiency.

Legal experts said the nuanced verdict sends a clear signal that courts will hold even the most powerful executives accountable for material misstatements to shareholders, even absent proof of an elaborate scheme. The case turned on a narrow but important question: whether Musk's tweets in May 2022 were false at the time he made them, and whether they caused shareholders to sell at depressed prices. The jury found yes on both counts for the two key tweets. The verdict carries implications beyond Musk's personal finances, raising broader questions about whether high-profile executives can use social media as an instrument to manipulate stock prices around major transactions without liability. Attorney Elizabeth Cabraser, who led the plaintiffs' team, called the verdict a vindication for thousands of ordinary investors harmed by Musk's posts.