Corporate Governance and Delaware Chancery

Elon Musk has asked Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick to recuse herself from ongoing Tesla shareholder derivative lawsuits, arguing she showed bias by “liking” a LinkedIn post celebrating his roughly $2 billion loss in a separate California fraud case. Musk’s lawyers filed a recusal motion that includes a screenshot of the post and says a McCormick staffer also liked another anti‑Musk post tied to litigation whose underlying facts overlap with the current Tesla cases over alleged overpayment to Musk and the board. McCormick, who previously oversaw Twitter’s 2022 suit forcing Musk to complete his $44 billion acquisition and twice voided his multibillion‑dollar Tesla pay package before the Delaware Supreme Court reinstated it, responded in a letter saying she either did not click “support” or did so accidentally, and has since deactivated her LinkedIn account. The motion also cites Musk’s recent testimony that he felt compelled to close the Twitter deal because he believed McCormick was “extremely biased” against him, while critics online are split between seeing the LinkedIn activity as improper for a sitting judge and viewing Musk’s recusal push as an attempt to sideline an adverse jurist in high‑stakes corporate‑governance fights.