Elon Musks lawyer asks court to throw out Twitter sitter deal with SEC
Summary
The centi-billionaire, who is also the CEO of SpaceX and Twitter, was sued by Tesla shareholders over a series of tweets he wrote in August 2018 saying he had "funding secured" to take the automaker private for $420 per share, and that "investor support" for such a deal was "confirmed." Musk had previously settled with the SEC over the tweets in 2018, and eventually struck a revised settlement agreement that called for a legal and regulatory compliance point person at Tesla (informally, a "Twitter sitter") to pre-approve any of Musks tweets containing any information about the publicly traded company that could affect its stock price. Musks attorney, Quinn Emanuel Partner Alex Spiro, wrote in a letter to the court this week that the SEC lacks support for their revised settlement agreement in light of the jurys recent finding. "The jurys verdict provides further reason why the public interest in avoiding unconstitutional settlements easily subsumes the SECs purported stake in the consent decree," Spiro wrote in a filing. The lead attorney for the shareholders in that matter, Levi & Korsinsky Partner Nicholas Porritt, did not respond to a request for comment.