Judge rejects Musk bid to toss Twitter fraud verdict

A federal judge in San Francisco kept Elon Musk's Twitter investor fraud case alive, rejecting his bid to toss a March 2026 jury verdict that found he misled shareholders while buying the social media company now known as X. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer also denied Musk's request to decertify the investor class and granted the plaintiffs prejudgment interest, increasing the money still at stake.

Breyer said Musk was not liable for one of the challenged tweets, but he left the core finding intact. The class action, Pampena v. Musk, was filed in October 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and the March 2026 jury found Musk liable for securities fraud under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act and SEC Rule 10b-5(b).

The lawsuit centers on Musk's public conduct during the 2022 takeover fight. He disclosed a roughly 9% stake in Twitter in early April 2022, Twitter accepted his $54.20-a-share offer on April 25, a price that represented a 38% premium to the April 1 close, then Musk said on May 13 that the deal was temporarily on hold over fake-account concerns and on May 17 said he would not move forward until Twitter proved fewer than 5% of accounts were fake.

That chronology remains the backdrop for one of the biggest securities-fraud exposure cases tied to a corporate takeover in recent years. Plaintiffs' lawyers have estimated damages at about $2.5 billion to $2.6 billion, and Breyer's ruling means the case can continue on damages and related issues because the investor class was not decertified.

For Musk, the ruling preserves a legal loss that already reached a jury and leaves open a costly next phase. For other corporate leaders, it is another sign that social-media posts, dealmaking theatrics and public pressure campaigns can still draw the same disclosure scrutiny that applies to any market-moving figure when investors claim they were misled.