Elon Musk has asked a New York court to annul a provision of an agreement made with the American stock market policeman (SEC) obliging him to have his tweets linked to the activity of his Tesla group validated by a lawyer.
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In a document filed Tuesday night in a Manhattan federal appeals court, Mr. Musk’s attorneys describe the clause as a “government-enforced muzzle.”
“The provision has the effect of constraining and undermining the speech authorized by the law of Mr. Musk”, assert the lawyers, who denounce the “unconstitutional” character of the clause.
The Tesla boss was reprimanded by the SEC after posting a message on Twitter in 2018, in which he claimed to have the appropriate funding to remove the electric vehicle maker from the stock market, without providing proof.
The stock market regulator then imposed on him to let go of the chairmanship of Tesla’s board of directors, pay a fine of $ 20 million and, after a new unfortunate tweet in early 2019, to have his tweets directly related to the activity of Tesla approved. the company by a competent lawyer before their distribution.
A previous attempt by Mr. Musk to end the agreement with the SEC was rejected at the end of April by Judge Lewis Liman, who notably ruled that the entrepreneur could not withdraw on the grounds that “his business has become, in his eyes, invincible.
Mr. Musk, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at nearly 260 billion dollars, is also engaged in a legal battle against Twitter, which he had wished to acquire for 44 billion dollars in April before giving up his project a few months later.
The social network launched lawsuits in early July to force the billionaire to honor his contract. For his part, Mr. Musk justifies the abandonment of the takeover by saying that the number of fake accounts on Twitter is significantly higher than the estimates communicated by the company.
The trial is scheduled to take place from October 17 to 21 in a specialized court in the state of Delaware (east coast of the United States).