Lawsuit from Tesla investors: Elon Musk flashed off with a request for the process to be rescheduled

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Tesla boss Elon Musk

Photo: FREDERIC J. BROWN / AFP

Tesla boss Elon Musk has failed in an attempt to move, or at least postpone, the process for an investor lawsuit surrounding his 2018 tweets from San Francisco to Texas.

The hearing is now scheduled to begin on Tuesday, according to court documents.

First up is the selection of the jury.

Musk's lawyers had argued that San Francisco jurors were mass biased against the tech billionaire.

However, the judge did not accept this.

The lawsuit follows Musk's tweets in the summer of 2018, announcing that he intends to take Tesla public and has "secured" funding to do so.

It later turned out, however, that there were still no final commitments.

In the lawsuit, investors accuse Musk of losing money to the price fluctuations triggered by the tweets.

Musk's attorneys, citing questionnaires filled out by potential jurors, argued that the businessman could not get a fair trial in California.

Around two-thirds of the candidates have negative views of the tech billionaire, they stressed.

Tesla's headquarters are now in Austin

Judge Edward Chen, however, said sympathy was not a factor in jury selection, financial service Bloomberg reported at a hearing on Friday.

So a woman remained in the selection who had written that Musk was "unsympathetic".

Nor was it disqualifying to write in the questionnaire, "The cars are nice, but Mr. Musk is an idiot." The jury candidate, who called him the "next Trump" and a "narcissist with election ideas," was weeded out.

When the lawsuit was filed, Tesla was still headquartered in Palo Alto in Silicon Valley south of San Francisco.

Meanwhile, Musk moved headquarters to Austin, Texas.

The 51-year-old, long celebrated as a tech visionary, revealed right-wing political views, especially in the course of his takeover of Twitter, which made him less popular in California, which is traditionally rather liberal.

Judge Chen already found that Musk's statements in the tweets at the time were wrong.

The jury will be advised of this, but should make up their own minds.

They must also determine whether Musk acted on purpose and whether investors were hurt by relying on his words.

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