Lawyers who successfully argued that a massive pay package for Tesla CEO Elon Musk was illegal and should be voided have requested the presiding judge to award them company stock worth $5.6 billion as legal fees. The attorneys, who represented Tesla shareholders in the case decided in January, made the request of the Delaware judge in court papers filed Friday.
The amount would apparently be the largest such award, if approved, surpassing the $688 million legal fees awarded in a class-action suit related to the collapse of Enron in 2008. The Tesla plaintiff attorneys justified their request by highlighting that they worked on a contingency basis for over 5 years, risking receiving nothing if they had lost the case. They emphasized that the benefit to Tesla from their efforts was substantial.
