Elon Musk has suffered the worst streak of court defeats in a career marked by legal battles, showing the dangers of his aggressive litigation tactics and polarizing his public persona ahead of a showdown with Sam Altman and OpenAI later this month.
Since January, Musk has faced setbacks in cases over OpenAI’s alleged theft of secrets from his startup xAI, the advertiser boycott of X and two lawsuits over his 2022 acquisition of the social media group, then called Twitter, including a fraud verdict that could cost him billions of dollars.
The billionaire’s legal team responded by complaining of “bias” against the world’s richest man. They objected to a Delaware judge “liking” a LinkedIn post critical of Musk and questioned Twitter’s verdict over what they called a “bizarre and highly questionable” joke involving the “4.20” marijuana reference in a jury document.
As he prepares for the OpenAI trial later this month in Oakland, California, in which Musk claims the AI startup sold out its charitable purpose, the seemingly endless court battles have exposed Musk to embarrassing questions and irritated his own staff.
Some lieutenants see them as an obstacle to improving performance at X and xAI and organizing its merger with SpaceX before its initial public offering, scheduled for June at a valuation of $1.75 trillion.*
“For the most part, Elon is a pretty thoughtful and reactive CEO,” said a lawyer who worked with him. “He accepts advice more than expected, especially on the technical nature of the law at critical moments.”
“But he has a lot going on in his life, which is a distraction,” they added. “This ego fight with Sam at OpenAI, for example.”
Musk has tried to leverage his massive, free-wheeling social media presence to bolster his case against OpenAI, deriding his opponent as “Scam Altman” and promising to donate any damages in the case to charity.
But the series of recent decisions highlights the dangers of Musk’s online persona, with his frequent posts exposing him to legal attacks and alienating sections of the public.
His lawyers in the Twitter fraud case argued that he could not receive a fair trial in San Francisco – following his alliance with US President Donald Trump – because “we have so many people in the [jury pool] “They hate him.”
Musk wants to convince a jury in Oakland to block OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit company and remove Altman, whom he accuses of abandoning his original nonprofit mission to enrich himself.
Altman and Musk, who co-founded OpenAI together, have become increasingly bitter rivals since Musk left the lab in 2018.
The $852 billion startup failed to get the case dismissed. But the judge’s early comments have not been favorable to Musk’s claim for $134 billion in damages, which she described as “pulling these numbers out of the air.”
Marc Toberoff, Musk’s lawyer, said his client’s public commitment to donate any damages to OpenAI’s charitable arm made it “very clear” that the case “has always been about OpenAI’s abuse of the public trust, not about Elon Musk.”
The evidence presented in the case could be salacious. the judge confirmed a motion to exclude questions about whether Musk used ketamine at Burning Man in 2017, the desert festival in Nevada he attended during important negotiations with OpenAI executives.
OpenAI’s lawyers repeatedly asked Musk in a deposition: “Do you know what rhino ket is?”, referring to a mixture of ketamine and amphetamines consumed recreationally. Musk said no and didn’t remember taking it.
William Frentzen, a lawyer for OpenAI, argued that the information was relevant because “it was at Burning Man that many of these decisions were made… If you asked me if I took ketamine at my jazz festival, I might say no.”
However, the judge denied a motion to exclude evidence related to Shivon Zilis, a “sometimes romantic” partner of Musk and mother of at least four of his children. She served on OpenAI’s board of directors until 2023 and remains an executive at Musk’s brain implant company, Neuralink.
Meanwhile, Musk accused Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman of “conspiracy to commit fraud and steal from the charity.”
He published extracts from Brockman’s diary, discovered in the discovery, where he wrote “this is the only chance we have to get out of Elon… Financially, what will get me to a billion dollars?”
“Greg’s diaries haven’t helped them,” said a partner at a venture capital firm that invested in both OpenAI and Musk’s rocket maker SpaceX. “But [OpenAI] “I have the least understanding counterpart in the world with Elon.”
Musk’s unpopularity has become a growing problem for his expensive legal team, often led by Quinn Emanuel’s Alex Spiro, who has attracted attention for his aggressive tactics.
The billionaire has faced backlash since donating more than $250 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign and leading government cost cutting at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which has hurt Tesla sales.
Musk’s abrasive style and advocacy of right-wing views have made him a divisive figure for juries, while his rampant use of social media has cost him dearly.
Twitter’s fraud verdict in March focused on tweets in which Musk threatened to pull out of the $44 billion acquisition to gain leverage in negotiations, even though he knew he couldn’t back out.
“It may not have been my smartest tweet,” Musk said during his testimony in the case. In March, a judge allowed a separate investor lawsuit over Musk’s tweets before the Twitter purchase to proceed.
Spiro has urged the judge to review the result, accusing the jury of bias and mocking Musk to “send a message” in his verdict form.
In a calculation of how much his tweets depressed Twitter’s stock price when he threatened to pull out, the jury wrote the number $4.20 in blue ink compared to black for the rest of the list.
Musk himself posted an
Until recently, Musk’s legal record had been formidable.
His lawyers defended an earlier lawsuit by Tesla shareholders over whether he had actually “secured” funds to buy the automaker when he announced the offer in a tweet, at $420 per share, a reference to April 20, a day celebrated by marijuana smokers.*
Musk has also won cases ranging from objections to the 2016 merger between Tesla and SolarCity, which was run by Musk’s cousin, to a defamation case brought by a British cave diver in 2018 after the billionaire called him a “pedophile” during efforts to rescue trapped children.
And he successfully fought to have his $56 billion pay deal with Tesla reinstated after it was overturned by a Delaware judge, who ruled that the company’s board of directors was too close to Musk.
Musk recently sought revenge against Judge Kathaleen McCormick. Quinn Emanuel successfully argued that he should withdraw from the current cases involving Musk and Tesla after he “endorsed” a LinkedIn post celebrating the San Francisco fraud verdict. McCormick has said he didn’t know if his account liked the post.
The post read: “Sorry Elon. Sorry Quinn Emanuel. Thank you $2 billion for your help in this lawsuit. It was a pleasure working against you.”
Having moved Tesla’s incorporation to Texas, it still faces a lawsuit in Delaware in which shareholders claim Musk put his personal ambition to buy Twitter ahead of the interests of investors in the automaker.
Some experts say shareholder lawsuits are serving to impose liability on Musk when Trump-appointed regulators have softened their enforcement.
However, Musk’s $630 billion fortune means he can easily swallow these lawsuits.
“Torts are not just supposed to be compensation, they are supposed to be prohibitions,” said Ann Lipton, a law professor at the University of Colorado. “Musk can pay the money without even realizing it, which gives him permission to break the law that most of us don’t have.”
*This story has been amended to correct SpaceX’s expected valuation and to clarify that Musk’s tweet about “funding secured” was referring to Tesla.
