Elon Musk Threatens 'Thermonuclear Lawsuit' Prompting Thermonuclear Terrible Legal Takes
Elon Musk wants to sue Media Matters for... something.
[UPDATE (11/20/23 7:40 p.m.): They’ve filed the frivolous suit.]
Elon Musk is not a lawyer. Indeed, he only owns Twitter today because he’s spectacularly bad at understanding the law. And, despite touting himself as a champion of free speech, he’s even worse at understanding how speech and defamation work. Which is the only explanation for the Chief Twit’s Saturday threat to sue Media Matters for writing… accurate facts?
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Electronic filing actually means you can file a lawsuit whenever you want regardless of the court’s business hours. Let’s just chalk this one up next to his cars catching fire as further confirmation that Elon isn’t particularly tech savvy.
As legal strategies go, publicly posting a detailed admission that the potential defendant has an airtight defense is a poor one. Musk’s Tweet or Xeet or whatever confirms that Media Matters accurately reported that the social media platform places blue chip advertisers right next to white supremacist messages. Hence a mass exodus of advertisers. Well, this and Elon going full Replacement Theory.
So, looking down our notes, Media Matters did not make a false statement and acquired this reporting without committing any sort of computer crime. That’s only a “thermonuclear lawsuit” if you insert the word “SLAPP” in there.
This is not the first bad legal take he’s spouted out into the ether. Back in September, he threatened a defamation suit against the Anti-Defamation League for statements of pure opinion. That suit never happened, presumably because someone with a law degree and credibility that they aren’t willing to shed on a crackpot theory to make Elon like them informed him that he had no cause of action. But now the head of the ADL applauds Elon hours after Elon endorses batshit anti-semitic conspiracies so maybe Elon achieved the chilling he wanted anyway.
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And, just like every other time Elon fronts a terrible legal theory, fanboys rushed to his aid. It’s the portals scene in Endgame except with legal gibberish pouring out.
Complicated!
Like Musk, Stephen Miller is also not a lawyer but likes to cosplay as one so he can file lawsuits against Pop Tarts for making kids gay. With a crackerjack legal mind like that, how could Elon NOT listen?
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Got to hand it to Miller for identifying a claim that makes even less sense than defamation. It’s still not a false statement! But now there’s the added obligation to prove that someone was duped by that false-but-not-actually-false statement in a way that caused injury. IBM and Apple aren’t injured by not advertising on a dying social media platform.
In fact, the whole impetus of the Media Matters reporting was the claim BY X that advertisers didn’t have to worry about their brands showing up next to wingnut Nazis, which Media Matters proved was not true. It was a false statement that advertisers relied upon to their detriment. So the only entity even arguably involved in fraud is… X!
What in the fuck are these people talking about?
Missouri taxpayer dollars at work on a task that wouldn’t warrant a 1L legal writing assignment. Maybe if they ask ChatGPT it can miracle them up some cases to support this drivel.
Scratch that. They’ll obviously ask Grok.
Well, courts in several jurisdictions — including Missouri — have been open (not that it matters) for a bit now. No sign of any lawsuits yet, but he did just post the Baptism scene from the Godfather which is exactly the dumbassery you’d expect from him at this point.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
