After a jury cleared the billionaire Tesla Inc chief executive over his missive that he had funding secured to take his electric car company private, Elon Musk may become more emboldened in his Twitter use.
A San Francisco jury took two hours to find out the second-richest person was not liable for allegedly tweeting fraudulently in August 2018 about a possible Tesla buyout.
Minor Myers, a professor of corporate law at the University of Connecticut, said Musk is likely to double down on his communication tactics after the verdict.
Myers said that this is only going to embolden him to act as he sees fit.
Musk eventually abandoned his effort to take Tesla private, but told jurors early in the trial that he had believed what he wrote in tweets.
Karen Woody, an associate professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law, said she thought the case was rock solid against Musk and was shocked at the verdict.
She said he pushed the boundaries and won. Musk thanked the jury on Twitter, which he bought in October for $44 billion, because I think Elon is going to write anything he wants.
He wrote that the wisdom of the people prevailed, thanks to the wisdom of the people.
The shareholders of Tesla who sued Musk had sought billions of dollars in damages.
Musk's raw tweeting style has made him a hero for many, and made him a hero for many, and destroyed the Tesla brand.
His lawyer, Alex Spiro, told the jury that the funding secured tweet was only technically inaccurate, and he fought hard against accusations that he had not told the truth.
Spiro said something during closing arguments.
The tweets resulted in Musk and Tesla paying $40 million to resolve U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission civil charges under a consent agreement that Musk fought unsuccessfully to lift.
Adam Pritchard, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said he doesn't want to play by the SEC rules as the SEC understands them, and the SEC doesn't want to be perceived as backing down. I think they will continue to have their difficulties. Many analysts say Musk, who has more than 22,000 followers and has about 128 million Twitter followers, has no reason to slow down now.
When confronted by a lawsuit of this type, many people would have dialed back tweeting, said Kim Forrest, chief investment officer at Bokeh Capital Partners. Musk lives by his own rules, or so it seems, Forrest said.