A California jury on Friday largely sided with Twitter shareholders who alleged that billionaire Elon Musk made false statements and intentionally depressed the social network’s stock price ahead of his $44 billion acquisition in 2022. However, they cleared Musk of claims that he engaged in a “scheme” intended to defraud investors.
This verdict resolves a civil class-action lawsuit filed by a group of Twitter shareholders against Musk in October 2022—just weeks before he took ownership of the company. During the week-long trial, Musk was compelled to take the stand in a San Francisco federal court to defend the contentious takeover.
Musk initially agreed to purchase Twitter, now known as X, in April 2022, but then spent several months attempting to back out of the deal before ultimately finalizing the purchase.
Shareholders contended that Musk deliberately drove down Twitter’s stock price through tweets and public comments during that interim period, which suggested the deal might fall through. The plaintiffs claimed that they sold their shares after seeing the stock drop in reaction to Musk’s remarks and fearing the deal wouldn’t close, thereby missing out when the acquisition was finally completed.
The damages awarded by the jury are anticipated to total around $2.5 billion, contingent on the final number of class members who file claims, according to estimates from the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
“We are thrilled with today’s jury verdict, which we believe is the largest securities jury verdict in U.S. history,” stated Mark Molamphy, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, in a statement to CNN. “The jury sent a clear message that no one is above the law.”
Musk intends to appeal the decision, according to his billionaire’s legal team from the firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP, who pointed to separate, unrelated cases in Texas and Delaware where Musk recently prevailed on appeal.
“We are reviewing today’s verdict, in which the jury found for and against the plaintiffs on various claims, but did not find a scheme to defraud, as a hurdle. And we look forward to vindication on appeal,” Quinn Emanuel attorneys stated in a comment provided to CNN through a representative.
Musk’s legal team had pushed to dismiss the case, denying the falsity of Musk’s statements and arguing that the plaintiffs’ “deficient” complaint failed to adequately connect his statements to shareholder losses. During the trial, Musk testified, “If this was a trial about whether I sent stupid tweets, I’d say I was guilty,” according to the New York Times, though he added he didn’t believe those posts caused anything “material.”
The jurors found Musk liable due to two specific tweets: one from May 13, 2022, asserting that the Twitter deal was “temporarily on hold” while he sought information about the prevalence of bot accounts on the platform, and another on May 17, claiming the deal could not proceed until he obtained that data.
Twitter shareholders behind the class action were not the only ones raising concerns regarding Musk’s acquisition-related statements.
The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Musk in January 2025 for allegedly failing to properly disclose the size of his Twitter stake, which enabled him to purchase shares of the platform at “artificially low prices.” The SEC contended that Musk did not report within 10 days that he owned over 5% of the company’s common stock, which he had acquired by mid-March 2022.
Musk moved to dismiss the SEC’s lawsuit last August, calling the complaint “constitutionally invalid.” Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, previously told CNN that Musk “did nothing wrong” and that the lawsuit was “an admission by the SEC that they (sic) cannot bring a real case.”
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