A Delaware judge on Monday denied Tesla CEO Elon Musk his $58 billion pay plan, upholding her prior ruling that it was improperly granted.
The 2018 plan — the largest for a public company executive in U.S. history — had been described as "unfathomable" by the Delaware court, CNBC reported. Judge Kathaleen McCormick, who ruled to void Musk’s pay package in January, said they only way the pay package could have been approved was due to Musk’s unilateral “control” over Tesla.
Since the ruling, Musk has posted angrily on his social media platform X, echoing sentiments from his supporters that the ruling was corrupt and undeserved, and calling the legal proceedings “lawfare” — presumably a combination of the words “law” and “warfare.”
“Shareholders should control company votes, not judges,” he wrote.
The latest ruling followed attempts by Tesla to prove it properly granted the package. The company conducted a shareholder vote in June at its annual meeting, asking investors to approve and “ratify” the pay plan. McCormick said the vote was flawed because Tesla board members lacked autonomy in the company.
“Even if a stockholder vote could have a ratifying effect, it could not do so here,” McCormick wrote in her opinion. “Were the court to condone the practice of allowing defeated parties to create new facts for the purpose of revising judgments, lawsuits would become interminable.”
The pay package came in the form of stock options, according to The New York Times, and now may be worth over $100 billion since Tesla stock soared after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in November.
Even without the package, Musk’s net worth has increased by $43 billion since the election, as stockholders anticipate Musk’s relationship with Trump to ultimately favor the company’s performance.
