Elon Musk has proven he can dish out lawsuits in addition to he fights them.
Musk and his corporations have filed not less than 23 lawsuits in federal courts alone since July of 2023, a Fortune evaluation of federal courtroom data exhibits. Mixed with state fits, Musk, Tesla, X, and SpaceX have sued opponents, startups, regulation companies, watchdog teams, people, the state of California, federal companies, and pop star Grimes, who’s the mom of three of his youngsters.
Musk has been so legally aggressive that one decide determined his litigation was extra about revenge than justice: “This case is about punishing the defendants for their speech,” the decide stated.
In interviews with Fortune, regulation professors who’ve studied Musk stated the lawsuits show a combative, usually retaliatory method towards litigation. In instances towards small nonprofits which have criticized his content material moderation insurance policies on X, in addition to fits towards the Division of Justice and Nationwide Labor Relations Board regarding his remedy of staff, Musk continuously goes on the offensive when his enterprise practices are challenged by outsiders.
Angela Aneiros, a regulation professor at Gonzaga College, informed Fortune the fits Musk has filed are fueled by the billionaire’s wealth and affect. Musk “isn’t dissuaded by losing,” she stated, and he has the assets to litigate, enchantment, and relitigate disputes till he wins.
“[Musk and his companies] are bringing these lawsuits to punish whoever he’s suing for criticizing him or pointing out the truth,” Aneiros stated. “He’s just like, ‘I want to punish you, and I have the ability to do that.’”
X, SpaceX, and the regulation companies representing Musk in federal instances didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.
Among the complaints Musk has introduced are centered round defending his enterprise pursuits. After California handed a regulation forcing social media corporations to publish their insurance policies round policing hate speech and disinformation, X sued the state on the grounds the regulation violated free speech protections. Tesla, which is listed as a plaintiff in additional federal instances than another Musk firm (12), alleged in a swimsuit this summer time that certainly one of its suppliers misappropriated commerce secrets and techniques. The defendant, Matthews Worldwide, referred to as the grievance meritless and “a new tactic in their ongoing efforts to bully Matthews.”
Others seem extra private. In 2023, X sued a distinguished Wall Road regulation agency employed by Twitter’s earlier administration the 12 months prior after Musk tried to again out of his settlement to buy the corporate. The swimsuit alleged Twitter’s $90 million cost to the agency was an “unjust enrichment,” and that the agency “took funds from the company cash register while the keys were being handed over.” The regulation agency has denied X’s claims. The case stays open and a decide has dominated the dispute ought to be despatched to arbitration. In one other submitting final September, Musk sued Grimes (actual title Claire Boucher) to ascertain a parent-child relationship with their three youngsters. Grimes has filed her personal custody swimsuit towards Musk in California, and the case was sealed in December.
X Corp. and promoting
X, Musk’s most up-to-date enterprise enterprise, has been the billionaire’s most controversial car for litigation within the final 12 months. Since July of 2023, the corporate has filed not less than seven federal lawsuits on a spread of disputes. Most have been associated to X’s content material moderation insurance policies and advert income.
Final August, the corporate sued the Heart for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a watchdog group working to cease on-line hate speech, after it launched a report claiming that below Musk, Twitter had reinstated accounts of “neo-Nazis, white supremacists, misogynists, and spreaders of dangerous conspiracy theories.”
X responded with a grievance of its personal which accused CCDH of scraping knowledge off the positioning—a breach of its phrases of service—and alleged that the watchdog group’s report had value the corporate “tens of millions of dollars” in advert income.
Musk’s swimsuit, filed in federal courtroom within the Northern District of California, was thrown out by Choose Charles Breyer, who wrote in his determination that regardless of what X claimed in its grievance, the center of the lawsuit was about “punishing the defendants for their speech.”
“Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation, and only by reading between the lines of a complaint can one attempt to surmise a plaintiff’s true purpose,” Breyer wrote. “Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose. This case represents the latter circumstance.”
However even because the case towards CCDH was dismissed unequivocally, Musk and X have continued to deliver litigation towards teams who’ve raised issues in regards to the firm’s moderation insurance policies and disrupted the platform’s advert income.
In November, X sued the liberal advocacy group Media Issues after it revealed a report alleging the social media website had positioned advertisements for manufacturers like IBM, Oracle, and Apple subsequent to posts idealizing Hitler and the Nazis, inflicting a few of the sponsors to pause their promoting. The nonprofit’s president has referred to as the lawsuit “frivolous” and has stood behind its reporting.
Simply this month, Musk declared “war” on an promoting group often called GARM, accusing the nonprofit in a recent lawsuit of violating antitrust legal guidelines by colluding with a gaggle of manufacturers to drag advert spending from X after Musk acquired it in 2022. The courtroom has issued summons to the defendants named within the grievance. In response to the swimsuit, GARM’s mother or father group, the World Federation of Advertisers, which can also be named within the grievance, introduced it was discontinuing this system because of restricted assets.
“GARM is a small, not-for-profit initiative,” the group stated in a press release. “Recent allegations that unfortunately misconstrue its purpose and activities have caused a distraction and significantly drained its resources and finances.” The group has not but filed a response in courtroom.
Musk can also be personally bankrolling a swimsuit towards Disney—which paused promoting on X final 12 months—introduced by former Mandalorian actress Gina Carano over her termination. Disney has claimed First Modification protections and the case is headed for trial in 2025.
“He wants the best of both worlds,” Aneiros informed Fortune. “He wants to be able to say whatever he wants to say, and he wants some ruling to say that [other] companies can’t do anything, because it’s free speech.”
“If he can get past a motion to dismiss and extend litigation, a lot of these [groups] that he’s suing…they don’t have the power to continue to fight,” Aneiros stated. “That is really, really concerning to me. Musk can bring these baseless lawsuits, he has these unlimited funds, and rather than fight it these companies will just shut down.”
GARM isn’t the one nonprofit that has been outgunned by the billionaire. Media Issues introduced in Could that it was pressured to put off greater than a dozen workers members, partly because of the price of the authorized battle with Musk. CCDH’s present web site features a hyperlink to donate together with a word that claims “fighting against Elon Musk’s lawsuit has cost us thousands of dollars and delayed our work to hold social media giants accountable.”
Discussion board procuring
A part of the rationale Musk seems unaffected by prior authorized defeats could also be as a result of his techniques have modified.
Lately, some authorized consultants have accused the billionaire of “forum shopping”—the apply by which litigants select courts or jurisdictions which are most probably to present them favorable ruling—and one decide in Texas appears to have turn into a selected favourite.
Whereas the CCDH swimsuit was filed in California, X introduced the Media Issues case earlier than U.S. decide Reed O’Connor in Fort Price, despite the fact that neither celebration is predicated in Texas. O’Connor, a George W. Bush appointee, is a contributor to the Federalist Society who has handed down favorable rulings for conservatives previously. His most up-to-date monetary disclosures present he’s invested between $15,001 and $50,000 in Tesla inventory.
As with CCDH, Media Issues filed a movement to dismiss X’s case towards it, however O’Connor has allowed the invention course of to start.
Aneiros informed Fortune the Media Issues case was one of many lawsuits Musk is concerned in that she is watching most carefully.
“It has the potential to force companies not to say things because they don’t want to get sued if they criticize X or Musk,” she stated. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in that case. I don’t think it should be any different than the CCDH case, but because it’s in front of that other judge, we’ll see what happens with that one.”
Till just lately, O’Connor was presiding over the case towards advertisers as nicely, however recused himself on Aug. 13. Though the decide gave no motive for his recusal, the announcement got here shortly after NPR revealed a report highlighting his Tesla investments.
O’Connor’s workplace didn’t reply to Fortune’s requests for remark.
SpaceX and employment disputes
Fort Price isn’t the one favorable jurisdiction Musk has present in Texas.
In August 2023, the DOJ filed a grievance towards SpaceX alleging that the corporate routinely discriminated towards refugees and asylum seekers in its hiring course of. In response to the swimsuit Musk referred to as the grievance “a weaponization of the DOJ for political purposes,” and in September the rocket and satellite tv for pc maker hit again with a lawsuit of its personal in Brownsville, Texas.
Within the swimsuit, SpaceX complained that the method for appointing administrative judges who hear instances involving employment bias towards immigrants was unconstitutional. U.S. district decide Rolando Olvera, a Trump appointee, backed the corporate’s declare, suspending the DOJ case towards SpaceX.
Joan MacLeod Heminway, a regulation professor on the College of Tennessee, informed Fortune that Musk has taken a conservative view on the facility of federal companies and their skill to manage companies.
“I think the advice of counsel that he’s getting is that there are some openings for those kinds of lawsuits now,” Heminway stated. “We’re in a very dynamic stage—especially when it comes to government lawsuits—with respect to federal agencies and how much power they should have.”
It’s a method SpaceX has employed greater than as soon as, and the corporate has fought tooth and nail to maintain different instances in Texas. After the U.S. Labor Relations Board accused the rocket maker of illegally firing staff, SpaceX filed a swimsuit towards the NLRB a day later, once more calling into query the constitutionality of the federal government company’s construction. Just like the DOJ swimsuit, the grievance was filed in Brownsville.
This time, although, Choose Olvera dominated the case needed to be transferred to California, the place the occasions that triggered the swimsuit occurred.
In a fancy string of authorized motions, SpaceX then appealed to a U.S. circuit courtroom twice to have the switch reconsidered. The appeals courtroom lastly granted the corporate a short lived block on the NLRB case in Could. The case remains to be in Brownsville, although the NLRB has been given approval to maneuver to switch it to California.
The truth is, the corporate filed a second swimsuit towards the NLRB within the spring on the identical difficulty, this time in Waco, Texas, below one other Trump appointee, Choose Alan Albright. Underneath a standing order, all non-patent civil instances in Waco are assigned to Albright (Olvera, in Brownsville, will get 50% of civil instances). Albright granted SpaceX a short lived block on the NLRB case in July.
“He doesn’t like losing, and if he loses based on a current rule, he’s going to challenge the rule,” Heminway informed Fortune. “Or he’s going to challenge the ruling if it’s not made by the highest authority in the land.”
Elon Musk’s private authorized battles
In private authorized battles, Musk has proven an equal dedication to see issues by way of. Earlier this 12 months, the billionaire filed a swimsuit towards OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman. Musk, who cofounded the startup, and has since launched his personal AI enterprise, accused OpenAI of abandoning its mission to develop synthetic intelligence for the advantage of humanity slightly than for revenue.
This summer time, Musk withdrew the swimsuit, filed in San Francisco’s Superior Courtroom, sooner or later earlier than a decide was ready to listen to OpenAI’s movement to dismiss the case. However on Aug. 5 Musk doubled down with a brand new grievance.
In contrast to the earlier grievance, the brand new case has been filed in federal courtroom. The federal case allowed Musk’s lawyer Marc Toberoff to incorporate allegations of civil racketeering, whose swimsuit argues that OpenAI and Altman conspired to defraud the billionaire, who made investments within the startup on the belief the product could be open-source.
“OpenAI was Sam Altman’s Trojan horse,” Toberoff informed Fortune in a press release. “This lawsuit at its core holds defendants accountable for their intentional misrepresentations to Elon Musk and to the public.”
In response to the preliminary swimsuit, OpenAI revealed emails it stated had been despatched by Musk in 2018 suggesting the startup ought to turn into a part of Tesla, and stated Musk understood early on that OpenAI’s mission didn’t indicate open-sourcing.
“As we said about Elon’s initial legal filing, which was subsequently withdrawn, Elon’s prior emails continue to speak for themselves,” a spokesperson for OpenAI, informed the Washington Submit after the second swimsuit was filed.
“He basically is just not afraid of suing on any grounds,” Heminway stated. “I’m not saying he disregards the law, but he really does like to push the envelope on the law. He’ll listen to legal advice, and then he does what he wants, and then somebody has to clean up the mess, from a lawyering perspective, afterward. And even if he loses the case, he doesn’t seem to care.”
