Elon Musk tried, and failed, to throw out a defamation suit filed against him by an outspoken Tesla critic and short-seller
- Elon Musk tried to throw out a defamation lawsuit filed against him by an outspoken Tesla critic.
- Judge Julia Spain rejected Musk's request and said Musk could lose the case.
- Musk had said Randeep Hothi had "actively harassed" and "almost killed Tesla employees."
A judge has denied Elon Musk's request to toss out a defamation lawsuit filed against him by an outspoken Tesla critic.
Randeep Hothi, a Tesla short-seller, claimed in a lawsuit filed last August that Musk defamed him and injured his reputation by writing in an email that Hothi had "almost killed Tesla employees."
Musk tried to overturn the lawsuit, but his attempts were unsuccessful. Judge Julia Spain of Alameda County Superior Court in California rejected Musk's claims that the lawsuit was baseless and an attempt to stifle his free speech.
In a ruling published on Wednesday, the judge said there were grounds for a trial, adding that Hothi could win. Spain ruled that Musk's statements about Hothi were not protected under California's Anti-SLAPP statute, which allows lawsuits to be dismissed quickly if they interfere with the defendant's free speech, as Tesla did not demonstrate that Musk's statements were made in connection with a matter of public interest.
Bloomberg was the first to report the court's ruling.
Tesla did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Hothi filed the suit in August because of an email Musk sent to Aaron Greenspan, who operates the law transparency site PlainSite. In response to questions from Greenspan about Musk's history of speaking out against Tesla critics and whistleblowers, Musk said Hothi had "actively harassed" and "almost killed Tesla employees."
"What was a sideswipe when Hothi hit one of our people could easily have been a death with 6 inches of difference," Musk wrote, according to the suit.
Screenshots of the exchange were posted on Twitter, which Hothi says led to an "onslaught" of harassment accusing him of being "a liar, a murderer, a terrorist, and a deranged maniac." Hothi claims in the suit that Musk knew or should have known his statements would be made public.
Hothi claims he has and will suffer a loss of wages and business opportunities as a result of Musk's statements and is seeking unspecified damages.
A yearslong clash
The issues between Hothi and Tesla appear to date back to at least 2018, when Hothi took pictures of a tent being erected at Tesla's Fremont, California, facility. After posting the photos on Twitter, Hothi claims in the suit that Musk and Tesla investigated Hothi and took down his license plate number.
In February 2019, Hothi visited Tesla's sales center at its Fremont facility. According to Hothi's suit, it was an "attempt to gather information about Model 3 production." He claims Tesla recognized his license plate and sent a security guard to confront him.
In a third incident two months later, Hothi says he photographed a Tesla test vehicle with roof-mounted cameras used for capturing video and audio for the company's autopilot feature. Tesla employees inside the car recorded Hothi's plates and informed Musk.
The incidents led Tesla to file a temporary restraining order against Hothi in April 2019, which claimed that Hothi had hit the security guard with his car at Tesla's Fremont factory and had endangered those driving the Tesla car by "swerving dangerously close to the vehicle."
Tesla's suit also claimed that Hothi had trespassed on Tesla property multiple times. In 2018, an Arlo security camera was found mounted on a utility pole at Tesla's Fremont plant, which the company discovered was registered to the name Skabooshka, Hothi's Twitter handle. In early 2019, the company discovered another security camera and later observed someone driving a car registered to Hothi's father coming to collect the camera, according to the suit.
Attorney and fellow Tesla short-seller Lawrence Fossi helped Hothi raise more than $100,000 for his defense, calling him "a seeker of truth who has done valuable work."
But Tesla dropped the suit last year after a judge ordered the company to provide evidence to back up its claims. Though the company said at the time it had video and audio evidence that would prove its claims, providing it to the judge would have subjected Tesla employees to an invasion of their privacy, it said.
The suit is part of Musk's years-long war with short-sellers. Musk publicly despises short-sellers, investors who attempt to profit by betting on Tesla stock taking a dive in value. He has frequently railed against the practice, taunting those who engage in it with actual pairs of shorts, even going as far as to produce Tesla-branded, red, satin short shorts and selling them in Tesla's online store.
Musk is no stranger to legal battles. Just last week, Tesla filed a complaint accusing an engineer of stealing trade secrets, saying he began transferring files within days of joining the company. In a similar situation in November, a former Tesla employee had to pay the company $400,000 for sharing trade secrets with the press, following a two-year dispute with Musk.