Tesla founder Elon Musk has been cleared of wrongdoing for a tweet in which he said he had “funding secured” to take the electric carmaker private.
Mr Musk faced a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of Tesla shareholders who argued he misled them with the tweet in August 2018.
The proposed $72bn (£60bn) buyout never materialised.
If the San Francisco jury had found him liable he could have been ordered to pay billions of dollars in damages.
It took the nine jurors less than two hours to reach their verdict after a three-week trial.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Mr Musk over his tweet, accusing him of lying to investors. He and Tesla settled for $20m each.
Mr Musk, who also leads SpaceX and Twitter, had argued that he thought he had a verbal commitment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund for the deal.
During closing arguments earlier on Friday, he sat in court listening as duelling portraits were drawn of him by the rival legal teams.
Nicholas Porritt, a lawyer for the Tesla shareholders, said: “Our society is based on rules. We need rules to save us from anarchy. Rules should apply to Elon Musk like everyone else.”
Mr Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, said: “Just because it’s a bad tweet doesn’t make it a fraud.”
Source: bbc.co.uk
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