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SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

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Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#131

Post by cmurf »

voodooranger wrote: post #121
detaro wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal point isn't if what he tweeted was "that bad" or not. It's that after he got caught the last time, in the settlement to end the case he agreed to have Tesla legal review all such tweets in the future to make sure he doesn't do it again. He broke that agreement.

i believe elon’s argument is that the offending tweet didn’t need approval because he believed that he was just restating a projection made on the previous earnings call

What he believes doesn't matter, it's what he agreed to that matters, and he violated that agreement.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#132

Post by cat199 »

mlindner wrote: post #54
petee wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you mean like uphold the law?

How about go after things that actually cause harm? The SEC should stop protecting those who wish to harm Tesla and actually act on behalf of shareholders. The shareholders don't want Elon out. If they did they would have voted him out.

distorting share prices doesn't cause harm?

i'm sure all of the poor Enron shareholders are mad at the SEC for the same reason, etc etc etc

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#133

Post by kelnos »

eduah wrote: post #87
grigjd3 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government isn't canning Musk. They're fining him for releasing material misinformation about his company. This has been well established in the law.

Not misinformation, guidance was 350 - 500. This is a technicality of not getting approval for a tweet that could be interpreted as saying they are definitely hitting 500k 8 months from now. This is stupid. https://twitter.com/_jameshatfield_/status/11001772987230945...

If he didn't want to be bound by the requirement to have all his tweets go through a legal review, then he shouldn't have agreed to a settlement with the SEC that required him to do so. It's really that simple. Doesn't matter if it's stupid or not; he signed a legally-binding court document agreeing he'd do it.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#135

Post by detaro »

Aeolun wrote: post #122
detaro wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla registered his Twitter account as an official channel for such information. That brings with it expectations and obligations, since investors etc now have to read it to be fully informed, and has similar relevance to e.g. official Tesla press releases. He specifically agreed to have Tesla legal review all such tweets to make sure he doesn't tweet bad information again , and promptly went and ignored that.

I don’t think the ballpark estimate 0-500k could possibly be interpreted as accurate/reliable (and by extension, bad) information. Except by some particularly whiny people looking for an excuse.

He said "around 500k", not "0-500k". And the SEC isn't filing this because he tweeted "bad" information, but because he violated the settlement where he agreed to have Tesla legal review all such tweets, which he didn't do. That he had to correct the numbers just made it obvious that he might have failed to do so.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#136

Post by Aeolun »

supernovae wrote: post #81
blhack wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a human being who also happens to be the head of a public corporation. We can't expect every single action he takes at every point to be filtered into legalese. IMO, if he had said this in an earnings call, or presented it in a way that made it seem "official", then I could get the problem, but it's twitter .

We don't even hold our president liable for what he says on twitter.

Yeah, it’s a bit of a disgrace really. Influencing global politics and destroying the US’s reputation in the world is apparently less relevant than someone potentially influencing some stocks.

I dunno, looking on from overseas it’s a bit surreal. Trumps tweets have normalized too, so it’s no news anymore when he tweets something outrageous.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#137

Post by joshuamorton »

eduah wrote: post #92

Guidance for this year was 350k - 500k. Elon said several times on the call that he thought they could beat the 500k. This is a technicality on not getting approval for a tweet that could unreasonably be interpreted as saying they are definitely hitting 500k 8 months from now. This is stupid. https://twitter.com/_jameshatfield_/status/11001772987230945...

350-500k annualized, not 500k for the year.

That exactly what the follow up tweet which was vetted clarifies.

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#138

Post by gamblor956 »

eduah wrote: post #92

Guidance for this year was 350k - 500k. Elon said several times on the call that he thought they could beat the 500k. This is a technicality on not getting approval for a tweet that could unreasonably be interpreted as saying they are definitely hitting 500k 8 months from now. This is stupid. https://twitter.com/_jameshatfield_/status/11001772987230945...

It's stupid to think that the difference between 350k and 500k is immaterial, especially for a company which struggled to hit the low end of that range the last 2 years.

Tweeting that they definitely would hit the high end of that range, i.e., 500k, i.e., almost 142% of the low-end of the range, was a specific statement about Tesla's capabilities intended to narrow the range of the earlier statements in the interview. Ergo, the tweet was material information and it was reasonable for investors to interpret that Tesla would hit 500k by the end of the year, because it was tweeted by the CEO himself. The clarification about it being a pro-rated (i.e., annualized) number was not provided until much later. (And legally that makes all the difference.)

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#139

Post by bostonpete »

xenadu02 wrote: post #52
bostonpete wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's incorrect if you read the SEC filling the problem was that he was projecting 2019 production publicly

> the problem was that he was projecting 2019 production publicly That is also incorrect. The settlement only mandated that Musk get company approval for Tesla-related tweets. It would have been as simple as him sending an email with the proposed tweet to get signoff before blasting it out there. This is actually extremely common and partially for these sorts of reasons. The SEC asked Tesla if Musk followed the agree…

The settlement required approval for statement containing information material to shareholders, not any tweet about Tesla. That's why the 2019 projection was mention as the problematic tweet in the SEC filing

Re: SEC Asks Manhattan Federal Court to Hold Elon Musk in Contempt

#140

Post by kakwa_ »

mjevans wrote: post #26

This is where a software solution might actually help. As an example, I've added some keywords to a script in my IRC client that if they exist the message is stopped by my client. In Elon Musks' case this should be Tesla (and probably some other court mandated muzzles) and should be on their Twitter clients, and other "designated publication channels" that the ruling covers. Why? Because remembering to not do things…

I'm wondering if an AI could be trained to recognize the good/mhea/bad tweets from Elon Musk (by looking at the time of tweets, reactions in the press, and Tesla stock price). A "Should Musk have tweeted that" app or something like that, giving a score for his latest tweet.
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