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Elon Musk attorneys aim to move trial from California to Texas, citing ‘local negativity’



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Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at an event in Hawthorne, California April 30, 2015.Patrick T. Fallon | ReutersAttorneys for Tesla and Elon Musk are asking a federal judge in San Francisco to move, or delay, a forthcoming trial from Northern California to Western Texas, saying they won’t be able to find unbiased jurors and citing “local negativity” toward Musk.Musk, and other current and former Tesla board members, are set to face a jury in a shareholder class action that claims the CEO manipulated Tesla’s stock in 2018 when he tweeted that he was considering taking his electric vehicle company private at $420 per share, and had “funding secured” to do so.related investing news Tesla’s stock trading initially halted, then shares were highly volatile for weeks after the tweets.That year, Musk resided in California and Tesla was headquartered in Palo Alto. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO moved his residence to Texas in 2020, and his electric vehicle company relocated its headquarters to Austin in 2021.In 2022, Northern California Senior District Judge Edward M. Chen, who is overseeing the trial, ruled that Musk’s statements in 2018 were false and that he tweeted them knowingly. The forthcoming trial and jury will decide whether Musk’s now infamous tweets mattered to shareholders, if and how they impacted Tesla’s share price, and whether the company or its directors should be held liable and pay damages.In a motion to transfer …

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