A U.S. jury in California found billionaire Elon Musk liable for misleading shareholders of the former social media platform Twitter, according to media reports. The verdict in the class-action lawsuit means the world's richest man could be ordered to pay up to $2.6 billion in damages to investors, according to CNBC and other outlets. Giuseppe Bampina filed the lawsuit on behalf of people who sold Twitter shares between mid-May and early October 2022. The indictment showed that the jury agreed with the plaintiff that Musk violated securities law, which prohibits false and misleading statements that artificially depress a stock's price. In this case, Twitter's stock price. The civil lawsuit accused Musk of causing the price of Twitter shares to drop during his renegotiation of the purchase price or his attempt to back out of the deal entirely, which caused sellers to lose money on their shares. "This is a significant victory, not just for Twitter investors, but for the markets in general," said the plaintiffs' attorney, Joseph Coticone. "I believe the jury's verdict sends a strong message that even if you are a rich and powerful person, you still have to obey the law. No one is above the law." Musk's attorneys, as they left the courtroom, said they had no comment. Musk had tweeted during one stage of the purchase negotiations that the acquisition deal was temporarily on hold pending Twitter's proof that the percentage of 'fake accounts' was low, as the platform had claimed at the time. Musk abandoned his attempts to back out of a preliminary agreement to buy Twitter in late 2022 after the platform sued him to force him to perform the contract. Since then, Musk has merged the social media platform, which he renamed 'X', with his artificial intelligence startup 'xAI' and his private space exploration company 'SpaceX'.
