A group of former Twitter investors have prevailed at a federal civil trial over Elon Musk's actions amid his $44 billion acquisition of the social platform in 2022. A jury in San Francisco found Friday that tweets made by Musk about fake accounts on the platform had defrauded investors in the company. The jury sided with Musk on other allegations in the case.
It's not yet clear how much Musk will owe in damages as a result of the case but, as the Associated Press reports, it could amount to billions of dollars. Jurors calculated that shareholders should get "between about $3 and $8 per stock per day."
The class action lawsuit, one of several brought against Musk in the months following his takeover of the company, cited Musk's tweets about fake accounts on the platform. Facing a sinking Tesla share price in the days after announcing he would buy Twitter for $54.20 a share, the suit said Musk made tweets and statements that were intentionally meant to drive down Twitter's share price in an attempt to renegotiate or exit the deal.
The suit called out Musk's May 13, 2022, tweet that claimed the Twitter deal was "temporarily on hold" due to the number of fake accounts and bots on the platform, as well as one a few days later that suggested fake accounts might account for more than 20 percent of users. Twitter's stock
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