Billionaire investor Elon Musk won a key lawsuit this week, prevailing over a former Twitter stockholder who argued that Musk’s purchase of the company was completed by suppressing stock prices.
This week, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer dismissed an attempted class-action lawsuit brought by plaintiff William Heresniak.
The judge wrote that the plaintiff did not have the standing to sue, writing that the lawsuit was a “disjointed laundry list of— often irrelevant— grievances against Elon Musk.”
The dismissal is the second major win the billionaire has won in recent months. In February, a judge dismissed a class action lawsuit that argued that Musk and Tesla were not legally liable for his 2018 tweets about bringing the company private.
The Tesla founder has made a number of significant changes since purchasing the social media platform last year.
In particular, Musk drew praise from many conservatives for a number of reasons. Musk unbanned a number of right-leaning accounts on the site, including that of former President Donald Trump.
Furthermore, Musk released a large number of internal communications of the app’s former leadership. Dubbed the ‘Twitter files,’ the documents appear to show a previous leftward bias at the company.
The files include a number of revelations, including communication between Twitter officials and the Democratic Party. Furthermore, emails show that the U.S. government pressured Twitter to suspend a number of accounts, including those belonging to journalists.
Musk made headlines earlier this year when he was one of the last interview subjects of journalist Tucker Carlson before his dismissal from Fox News.
Since Carlson’s departure from the news network, the popular former anchor announced that he would start a version of his program on Twitter.
“If it’s successful, it means you can bring in a huge audience without the infrastructure of huge cable operations.”
If @TuckerCarlson’s show on #Twitter is successful, the social media platform could give cable news a run for its money. https://t.co/onyFLVmmkN
— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) May 14, 2023
The move was welcomed by Musk. Musk stated that the two “have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever.” However, Musk wrote that Twitter represented an opportunity for users to “interact, critique and refute whatever is said,” unlike “the one-way street of broadcast.”
Musk also recently revealed his choice for Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino to mixed reviews. The change is part of Musk’s plan to bring Twitter into the black.
