Musk is seeking to move the trial out of San Francisco, claiming he could not get a fair trial Tesla

Elon Musk Urged a federal judge to change the trial in shareholder suit out of San Francisco because he says negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him.

Instead, in a filing late Friday — less than two weeks before the trial was scheduled to begin on Jan. 17 — Musk’s lawyers said it should be transferred to the federal court in the Western District of Texas. That region includes the state capital of Austin, where Musk relocated his electric car company, Tesla, in late 2021.

Shareholder lawsuit stems from Musk’s tweets in August 2018 When he said he had enough funding to take over Tesla at $420 a share — an announcement that caused wild swings in Tesla’s share price.

in A victory for shareholders Last spring, Judge Edward Chen ruled that Musk’s tweets were false and reckless.

If moving the trial isn’t possible, Musk’s lawyers want to delay it until the negative publicity over the billionaire’s purchase of Twitter is over.

“For the past several months, the local media has saturated this area with biased and negative stories about Mr. Musk,” attorney Alex Spiro wrote in the lawsuit. That news blamed Musk personally for Twitter’s recent layoffs, Spiro wrote, and charged that the job cuts may have broken laws.

Lawyers for the shareholders stressed the last-minute timing of the request, saying, “Musk’s concerns are unfounded and his motion unfounded.”

“The Northern District of California is the appropriate setting for this lawsuit as it has been litigated for more than four years,” Attorney Nicholas Porritt wrote in an email.

Musk’s attorney’s report also notes that Twitter has laid off about 1,000 San Francisco area residents since then. bought the company in late October.

“A significant portion of the jury … is likely to hold a personal and material bias against Mr. Musk as a result of recent layoffs at one of his companies, where individual potential jurors — or their friends and relatives — may have been personally affected,” the filing said.

The report said Musk was criticized by the San Francisco mayor and other local officials for the job cuts.