A judge has ordered Tesla CEO Elon Musk to stand trial over his comments about a Thai cave rescuer
Tesla CEO Elon Musk will face trail in the US over bizarre comments he made about one of the divers who saved 12 boys from a flooded cave in Thailand.
A federal judge has cleared the way for a defamation trial against Elon Musk over his comments about a British cave rescuer after rejecting key arguments from the Tesla chief.
US judge Stephen Wilson ordered a trial to begin December 3 in Los Angeles in the case that centres on Musk’s tweets in a disagreement connected to the rescue of 12 boys from a cave in Thailand in July 2018.
Mr Musk called Vernon Unsworth “pedo guy” after Mr Unsworth, who helped with the rescue, ridiculed Mr Musk’s proposal to build a mini-submarine during the crisis as a “PR stunt”.
The judge rejected Mr Musk’s argument that the term “pedo guy” was a common insult and would be seen as an opinion and not a statement of fact.
The judge rejected Mr Musk’s argument that the term “pedo guy” was a common insult and would be seen as an opinion and not a statement of fact.
Judge Wilson said some of Mr Musk’s subsequent statements suggested he believed the charge about Mr Unsworth to be true, which has “created a genuine dispute over the meaning of Defendant’s tweets” that “must be resolved by a jury”.
Mr Unsworth has denied being a paedophile.
Judge Wilson accepted aspects of Mr Musk’s argument that Mr Unsworth was a “limited public figure” who had voluntarily injected himself into the public debate about how to save the boys.
To win a defamation case in US courts, public figures like celebrities must show actual malice on the part of the person making a false statement, as opposed to the lower standard of negligence.
But Judge Wilson ruled Mr Musk should not be shielded him from a defamation lawsuit because the allegation of paedophilia was not connected to the debate about how to save the boys.
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“To allow criticism into every aspect of a plaintiff’s life simply because he chose to get involved in a limited issue would render him an all-purpose public figure,” Judge Wilson wrote in a decision earlier this week.
“For defendant’s comments to relate to Plaintiff’s participation in public controversies, there must be some relationship between paedophilia and the rescue or the subs - there is simply no credible connection here.”
Alex Spiro, an lawyer representing Mr Musk, said in an email that “we look forward to the trial”.
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