{"id":237910,"date":"2026-03-26T18:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T18:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/237910\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T18:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T18:59:09","slug":"elon-musks-laywer-accuses-san-francisco-jury-of-bias-points-to-mocking-4-20-reference-in-damages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/237910\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk’s laywer accuses San Francisco jury of bias, points to ‘mocking’ $4.20 reference in damages"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk\u2019s lawyer is accusing a San Francisco federal jury of \u201cmocking\u201d<\/a> the billionaire by including \u201c$4.20\u201d among the figures pertaining to damages in a class-action suit that accused the tech titan of misleading Twitter investors.<\/p>\n

In a Thursday letter to US District Judge Charles Breyer, defense attorney Alex Spiro argued the verdict was \u201ccorrupted\u201d by bias and denied his client a fair trial.<\/p>\n

Spiro is seeking a probe into the matter \u2014 to be followed by a motion seeking a ruling in favor of Musk or a new trial.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk is seen arriving at San Francisco federal court on March 4. Getty Images<\/p>\n

The laywer cited a handwritten verdict form in which jurors listed \u201c$4.20\u201d for one damages entry \u2014 written in bright blue ink while the rest of the entries were black.<\/p>\n

Spiro said the unusual entry was no accident, calling it a deliberate jab at Musk tied to his well-known association with the number 420.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe inescapable conclusion,\u201d the attorney wrote, \u201cis that the jury felt it appropriate to use its verdict to send a message to Mr. Musk.\u201d<\/p>\n

He accused jurors of injecting \u201coutside influence and noise\u201d into what should have been a neutral deliberation.<\/p>\n

The number 420 is widely recognized as slang for marijuana and has been part of a running joke by Musk.<\/p>\n

In 2018, he tweeted he was considering taking Tesla private at \u201c$420\u201d \u2014 a post that triggered an SEC fraud case \u2014 and later set his Twitter buyout price at $54.20 per share, reinforcing the association.<\/p>\n

The jury found last week that Musk defrauded investors by intentionally driving down Twitter\u2019s stock price<\/a> before he acquired it in 2022, later renaming it X.<\/p>\n

A handwritten verdict form in which jurors listed \u201c$4.20\u201d is grounds for a new trial, according to Musk\u2019s lawyer. Quinn Emanuel<\/p>\n

Spiro argued in his letter filed Thursday that the jury wasn\u2019t actually \u201cdeciding a securities fraud case\u201d but sending Musk a message.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe jury\u2019s emphasis on the $4.20 number, which had no significance to its damages determination, but appears to be a mocking reference to a number previously associated with Mr. Musk, shows that the verdict was a mockery of justice: a commentary not on whether Mr. Musk committed securities fraud (he did not) but on the jury\u2019s views about Mr. Musk himself,\u201d Spiro wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo reasonable and experienced person could have any faith in the fairness of this proceeding or its resulting verdict,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

Plaintiffs in the high-stakes case had alleged Musk made public statements<\/a> about the prevalence of spam accounts and the status of the Twitter deal that depressed the company\u2019s stock price, harming traders who sold shares or related options during the period.<\/p>\n

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The jury found Musk liable for some of the fraud claims \u2014 but rejected the main allegation, that he conducted a deliberate \u201cscheme\u201d to manipulate Twitter\u2019s stock price.<\/p>\n

In his Thursday letter, Spiro claimed Musk was deprived of his chosen counsel after plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers indicated they intended to call Spiro himself as a witness \u2014 a move that would create a conflict under the advocate-witness rule.<\/p>\n

The lawyer, of Manhattan-based powerhouse firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, said he was forced to step back from a jury-facing role as a result. However, plaintiffs never called him to testify.<\/p>\n

Musk lawyer Alex Spiro took aim at the venue of the trial, arguing that seating an impartial jury in San Francisco was effectively impossible. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Spiro also took aim at the venue of the trial, arguing that seating an impartial jury in San Francisco was effectively impossible given widespread negative views of Musk there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remained concerned that Mr. Musk would be unable to seat an impartial jury given his notoriety and reputation in the District,\u201d Spiro wrote in the letter.<\/p>\n

He pointed to comments from Judge Breyer during jury selection \u2014 including that \u201c[m]aybe if I went in a different part of the country, I might get a different panel\u201d \u2014 as evidence the jury pool was biased.<\/p>\n

According to the filing, the court was forced to accept jurors with preexisting views because excluding all potentially biased candidates would have made it impractical to seat a panel.<\/p>\n

Spiro is pushing to overturn the jury\u2019s verdict. Matthew McDermott<\/p>\n

Taken together, the arguments lay the groundwork for a formal motion seeking a new trial or mistrial \u2014 a move that could upend the verdict just days after it was reached.<\/p>\n

In a notable aside, Spiro also referenced a separate legal battle in Delaware. He took a swipe at Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, the jurist who twice denied Musk a substantial payday<\/a> from Tesla shareholders.<\/p>\n

Spiro noted that McCormick had publicly reacted to a verdict in yet another case by endorsing a LinkedIn post celebrating an outcome against Musk.<\/p>\n

Musk recently demanded McCormick recuse herself from the Delaware case,<\/a> a class action lawsuit against Tesla.<\/p>\n

McCormick responded that the apparent endorsement may have been accidental \u2014 or something else entirely.<\/p>\n

\u201cI either did not click the \u2018support\u2019 icon at all, or I did so accidentally,\u201d she wrote, adding: \u201cI do not believe that I did it accidentally.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Post has sought comment from the plaintiffs\u2019 attorney in the San Francisco suit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk\u2019s lawyer is accusing a San Francisco federal jury of \u201cmocking\u201d the billionaire by including \u201c$4.20\u201d among…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[387,1611,1846,1016,101,103,102,104,106,105,995,47935],"class_list":["post-237910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-business","tag-elon-musk","tag-lawsuit","tag-lawsuits","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-tech","tag-x-formerly-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}