Elon Musk’s lawyers argued in their bid get his securities fraud trial moved out of San Francisco that 82% of all the prospective jurors who have an opinion of the billionaire view him negatively.
Questionnaires from almost 200 would-be jurors returned to the federal judge handling the case reinforce the argument that the Northern California jury pool for the trial starting next week “is biased against Mr. Musk,” and that much of the bias relates to claims in the lawsuit — “namely, Mr. Musk’s use of and honesty on Twitter,” his lawyers said.
The latest filing by the Tesla Inc. CEO and new owner of Twitter Inc. is part of his push to get the case brought by Tesla shareholders moved somewhere else, preferably Texas, due to “local negativity” in San Francisco after Musk recently slashed Twitter’s workforce in his effort to remake the social media platform.
