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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

#161

Post by afastow »

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

The SEC saw that argument coming and shot it down completely in their filing:

> According to Tesla’s Policy, any edits to a pre-approved Written Communication or even releasing a verbatim pre-approved Written Communication more than two days after it has been pre-approved requires that the pre-approval be reconfirmed. Even if the exact substance of the 7:15 tweet had been pre-approved 20 days before, Musk cannot credibly claim that he thought he was not required to obtain pre-approval again under the plain terms of the Policy. In fact, the written communication in the 7:15 tweet was not pre-approved 20 days earlier or at any time. Musk’s claim that he thought he was simply restating information from the January 30 communications is not credible.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664-Show-Cause.h... page 12

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

#162

Post by eduah »

jacques_chester wrote: post #143
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...

> This is a technicality It's the law. That's how it works. Especially if you agreed to it .

That is the point. He only violated it if you take the obviously wrong interpretation that the 500k was a new material statement. It was not. The agreement only covered new, material information, not repeating a previously given the high-end estimate.

Also, note that the market was closed at the time of the tweet and the second tweet clearing up any possible confusion, thus, having no impact on the stock.

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

#163

Post by jacques_chester »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #158
cmurf wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Apparently we live in a country where the government can murder thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, deny that it ever happened, and profit off of the destruction. But god help you if you make a tweet that is subjectively incorrect.

The justice system is not single-threaded. It can deal with more than one case at a time.

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

#164

Post by jrumbut »

zebraflask wrote: post #117
michaelt wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think for most crimes, saying "But I have a well known history of doing this" would make prosecutors less lenient, not more.

The legality is above my pay grade and will have to be deferred to the experts. Just from an economic line of thought, even a cursory look at Tesla and Elon's history of public statements would make a reasonable investor think "Gee, the CEO talks a lot. Maybe don't read too much into it."

The entire point of this law is so you can get accurate information to decide on your investments.

Otherwise you (the investing public) are going to say "well he could have a great factory, or he could be spouting off again, guess I'll keep the money under the mattress."

It would make it very hard to raise money to do big things.

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

#165

Post by missedthecue »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #158
cmurf wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Apparently we live in a country where the government can murder thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, deny that it ever happened, and profit off of the destruction. But god help you if you make a tweet that is subjectively incorrect.

The government profited? I always hear that it cost 6 trillion or something

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

#166

Post by cmurf »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #158
cmurf wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Apparently we live in a country where the government can murder thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, deny that it ever happened, and profit off of the destruction. But god help you if you make a tweet that is subjectively incorrect.

If the government does one thing unethical, immoral, or in violation of international law, and that must necessarily result in all contracts being nullified as preposterous in comparison, then it's chaos.

What you're describing is an eventual consequence of metastasizing corruption. Wealth does not trickle down, but corruption does.

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

#167

Post by SimbaOnSteroids »

gamblor956 wrote: post #48
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…

Why? Because remembering to not do things is a restraint that is extremely mentally burdensome and thus difficult to get correct 100% of the time. When you're the CEO of a publicly traded company, getting paid millions in stock comp to run that company, you don't get to use the excuse "it's mentally burdensome". The whole reason they're in that position, getting paid those obscene amounts, is that they're supposed to…

Why are you bawking at OP's software solution, in favor of a much more complicated software solution?

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

#168

Post by afastow »

Aeolun wrote: post #159
minimaxir wrote: post #4

SEC filing: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664-Show-Cause.h...

Seems to me he was indeed repeating information that was already public.

He repeated it incorrectly(thus the follow up tweet). And it wouldn't matter anyway because he was required to get pre-approval again, even if repeating something verbatim, if more than two days had passed. From page 12:

> According to Tesla’s Policy, any edits to a pre-approved Written Communication or even releasing a verbatim pre-approved Written Communication more than two days after it has been pre-approved requires that the pre-approval be reconfirmed. Even if the exact substance of the 7:15 tweet had been pre-approved 20 days before, Musk cannot credibly claim that he thought he was not required to obtain pre-approval again under the plain terms of the Policy. In fact, the written communication in the 7:15 tweet was not pre-approved 20 days earlier or at any time. Musk’s claim that he thought he was simply restating information from the January 30 communications is not credible.

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

#170

Post by mabbo »

SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #100
djakjxnanjak wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like Elon lacks the ability to control his behavior when he can tweet based on a momentary impulse. Elon has many bright ideas but not every notion of his is appropriate for public consumption. He ought to hand over the credentials to a PR or even a law firm so he can send all his tweets through them. And ask them to change the password.

It wouldn't be too hard to give him a twitter clone app that flows through a middleman before going live, git pull requests for twitter if you will.

I've been saying for years that Twitter ought to be offering that as a paid-for feature. They don't even have to charge much for it. Even something as simple as "All tweets have a 120 second delay during which time the following users will be pinged, shown the tweet, and given veto powers on it".

I'd pay for it just to have my wife be able to say "Really? You want to tweet another picture of the cat? No."

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