By Sara Randazzo and Tim Higgins
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (December 4, 2019).
LOS ANGELES -- Elon Musk told a Los Angeles jury that a Twitter
message he sent last year suggesting a man in Thailand was a
pedophile wasn't, in fact, meant to connotate a dictionary
definition of the word and was written in response to what he
viewed as an unprovoked attack.
Tuesday marked the second time this year that the chief
executive of both Tesla Inc. and Space Exploration Technologies
Corp. was in court over his use of Twitter. The appearances
underscore Mr. Musk's unusual relationship with the social-media
platform that he has used to gin up publicity for his companies
while also creating problems for himself.
Mr. Musk, dressed in a charcoal gray suit and sporting a tie,
took the stand to defend himself against a lawsuit brought by
British spelunker Vernon Unsworth. He accuses Mr. Musk of
defamation over comments the entrepreneur made referring to him as
"pedo guy."
"I just meant he was a creep," Mr. Musk said from the stand in
U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. He had made a similar defense
during a deposition earlier this year, saying then that it was a
common insult when he grew up in South Africa and meant a person is
"a creepy old man."
The legal battle stems from the CEO's involvement in an effort
to rescue a youth soccer team trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand
during the summer of 2018. After prodding on Twitter, Mr. Musk
tried to figure out how his engineers might help in their rescue.
He updated his followers on Twitter with his progress and
eventually settled on a submarine-like contraption that Mr. Musk
ultimately flew to the rescue site.
The sub was never used and the boys were rescued by other
means.
After their rescue, Mr. Unsworth, who helped in the early days
of the high-profile operation, criticized Mr. Musk's solution
during a CNN interview. He called Mr. Musk's effort a PR stunt and
said he could "stick his submarine where it hurts."
Mr. Musk responded with a tweet on July 15, 2018, to his
then-more than 22 million followers with a defense that concluded:
"Sorry pedo guy. You really did ask for it." Responding to a
Twitter user noting that he was calling Mr. Unsworth a pedo, Mr.
Musk wrote: "Bet ya signed dollar it's true."
Asked Tuesday if at the time he sent that tweet he didn't know
if the statement was true or false, Mr. Musk replied: "That's
correct." He told jurors he didn't mean the "pedo guy" tweet as
literally meaning he was a pedophile, just as he assumes Mr.
Unsworth didn't literally intend to imply he should be sodomized
with the submarine.
Arms crossed at times as he spoke from the stand, Mr. Musk said
he took the CNN comments as an unprovoked attack on a good-natured
attempt to help the children. "It was wrong and insulting, and so I
insulted him back," he said.
Mr. Musk, who later deleted the tweets and apologized, in late
August 2018 returned to the topic. He posted a tweet that seemed to
further poke at Mr. Unsworth, reading in part, "You don't think
it's strange he hasn't sued me?" Two days later, he wrote an email
to a BuzzFeed News reporter, his comments subsequently published,
that doubled down on his Twitter statements.
Mr. Unsworth brought his defamation lawsuit in September
2018.
Mr. Musk's lawyer, Alex Spiro, told jurors in opening remarks
that Mr. Unsworth received widespread praise for his role in the
rescue and didn't seem damaged by the online exchange. "They're
joking, taunting tweets in a fight between men," he said to the
jury of three men and five women. Throughout the openings, Mr.
Spiro referred to the tweet at issue as a JDART -- a joking,
deleted, apologized for, responsive tweet.
Taylor Wilson, a lawyer for Mr. Unsworth, countered that the
insults directed at his client by Mr. Musk colored "what should
have been one of the proudest moments of his life" and that he "did
the only thing he could" by suing.
The episode is only one of the Twitter controversies that Mr.
Musk generated last year at a time he was otherwise focused on
Tesla's troubled business. The electric-car company faced increased
scrutiny as it struggled with ramping production and delivering the
Model 3 compact car.
Tesla has been able to avoid traditional advertising in part
because of Mr. Musk's ability to harness the social-media platform
to talk directly to his followers. His unveiling last month of an
electric pickup was followed with updates about the vehicle on
Twitter, including a tally of preorders that, Mr. Musk said,
swelled to 250,000.
But his Twitter use has also engulfed Mr. Musk in public battles
with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Postings he made last
year on Twitter about plans to take Tesla private led to a lawsuit
by the SEC claiming he misled investors.
Mr. Musk settled the case. As part of that settlement, he paid a
fine, stepped down as Tesla chairman and agreed to have his tweets
preapproved by the auto maker when it came to messages that might
affect the company's stock price.
Mr. Musk was in a New York City court earlier this year before a
judge after the SEC claimed he violated the terms of the settlement
with tweets about production figures. The two sides resolved the
matter with a more detailed agreement on what pronouncements he
needs to get preapproved before tweeting.
Even before taking the stand Tuesday, Mr. Musk returned to
Twitter at 12:33 a.m. in Los Angeles to take a shot at another
online foe: investors betting against Tesla. "Short selling should
be illegal," he wrote.
In his testimony Tuesday, Mr. Musk said "Twitter is a
free-for-all" where people can write fact, fiction and "anything
that comes to mind."
Write to Sara Randazzo at sara.randazzo@wsj.com and Tim Higgins
at Tim.Higgins@WSJ.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 04, 2019 02:47 ET (07:47 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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