Elon Musk’s lawyer struggles to find acceptable jurors for trial because ‘so many people hate him so much’ – Jalopnik

There are certainly people who like the image of Elon Musk that they have in their heads, but no one actually likes Elon Musk as a person. The guy is so unlikable that even Donald Trump got tired of him, and the guy hangs out almost exclusively with the worst people in the world. Unfortunately, being a creepy, weird loser didn’t stop Musk from becoming ridiculously rich, but it did cause a few problems for his lawyers in a recent lawsuit over Twitter’s stock price, where Law360 Reports they had difficulty finding acceptable jurors because there are “so many people who hate him so much”.

That’s not a quote from the author of the article either. It would probably be a valid claim if it were, but no, that quote comes from Musk’s lawyer himself. Yes. They eventually found the nine jurors they needed to start the trial, but it doesn’t sound like it was easy. Starting with a pool of 92 potential jurors on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer quickly sent 38 of them home, saying they could not promise to be fair and impartial in a trial involving Musk.

After immediately excusing approximately 40% of the jurors, Judge Breyer continued questioning potential jurors based on their responses to the court’s questionnaire. He asked many of them if they felt their “strong views” would prevent them from being fair and impartial. “It cannot be based on your feelings about Mr. Musk, on anything you like or dislike,” Judge Breyer told the prospective jurors.

“I believe that in a criminal trial I would feel morally obligated to convict, but in a civil trial I might override those views,” the man said, adding: “I believe it would be to the benefit of the human race if Mr. Musk were sent to prison.”

There is less at stake in a civil case, the man said.

“I don’t believe that losing several hundred million dollars in a civil lawsuit will be even a drop in the bucket of his wealth,” he said. “So it doesn’t really matter.”

The man did not make it to the nine-member jury.

At one point, Judge Breyer reportedly accused one of Musk’s attorneys of punching a potential juror who admitted to hearing claims that Musk was involved in “market manipulation” but said “he would try” to be fair, noting that most people in the pool of potential jurors had claimed to have “a negative view” of Musk. But Musk’s attorney eventually convinced Judge Breyer to excuse the potential juror, along with a woman who told the court that Musk has “no moral compass” and “used his wealth to buy votes.”

“I’m afraid what’s happening here is that there are so many people [here] who hate him so much that we have become desensitized to how inappropriate it would be to have such a person on the panel,” Stephen Broome, one of Musk’s lawyers, told the court.

In 2023, Judge Breyer ruled that the investors had plausibly alleged that Musk had violated securities laws with a series of tweets stating that the deal had been “temporarily suspended” pending details of data on the number of alleged fake Twitter accounts, but that he was “still committed to acquisition.” Musk also stated that fake and spam accounts make up at least 20% of Twitter users, but investors said the statement misled the investing public into believing that Musk had received bot user data from Twitter, when in fact he had not.

The case has been working its way through the legal system over the past few years, but now that they have a jury, the trial can officially begin on March 2. Will Musk be found guilty of market manipulation? Will he be forced to pay? That remains to be seen, but even though this case doesn’t have much to do with cars specifically (unless you count the damage Musk has caused on Weird Car Twitter), we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.

It should at least be entertaining, especially considering that the judge made a point during a pre-trial hearing on Tuesday to ban any mention of Musk’s political beliefs specifically outside of 2022. Fingers crossed it will be spicy!