Corporate Governance and Securities Law

A federal jury in San Francisco on March 20, 2026, found Elon Musk liable for misleading investors by using two tweets in May 2022 to drive down Twitter’s stock price in the months before his $44 billion acquisition, but stopped short of finding that he intentionally 'schemed' to defraud shareholders. The class‑action civil case focused on whether Musk’s public statements — including a tweet saying the Twitter deal was 'temporarily on hold' — caused investors to sell shares at depressed prices, while he later reversed course and closed the deal at the original price after Twitter sued in Delaware. Jurors concluded he misled investors with two tweets but not with a podcast appearance, and they awarded shareholders roughly $3 to $8 per share per day in damages, a figure that could translate into billions of dollars in liability across the class. Much of the trial centered on Musk’s public claims that Twitter underreported fake and spam accounts, which he cited as grounds to abandon the deal before ultimately taking the company private and renaming it X. The verdict adds a rare courtroom rebuke to Musk’s use of social media to move markets and will likely fuel renewed debate over how aggressively U.S. securities law should police real‑time statements by powerful tech executives.