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An legal professional advised a Los Angeles federal jury Friday it could be affordable to award $190 million in damages to a British cave explorer who’s suing Elon Musk for allegedly branding him as a pedophile throughout a Twitter spat.
Legal professional Lin Wooden stated the advised sum consists of $150 million in punitive damages.
Musk, who testified his inventory in Tesla and SpaceX is value about $20 billion, contends that he was not being literal when he referred to Vernon Unsworth as a “pedo man.”
The case was anticipated to go to the jury later within the day after closing arguments finish.
The spat occurred as Unsworth was concerned within the rescue of a youth soccer crew and its coach from a flooded collapse Thailand.
Unsworth had ridiculed Musk’s effort to assist in the rescue by having engineers at his firms, together with Area X and The Boring Co., develop a mini-submarine to move the boys. Regardless of working across the clock to construct the sub, Musk arrived in Thailand late within the rescue effort and the craft was by no means used.
Unsworth known as it nothing greater than a “PR stunt” and stated Musk may stick the sub “the place it hurts.”
In his closing argument, Wooden known as Musk a “billionaire bully” who lied when he claimed “pedo man” solely means “creepy outdated man” and when he apologized to Unsworth.
The largest lie, Wooden stated, was when Musk accused Unsworth of being a pedophile.
“When Elon Musk tweets one thing it goes world wide,” Wooden stated.
He added: “It could possibly by no means be deleted.”
Unsworth testified that he needed to sue Musk for defamation as a result of if he did not, the allegation would appear true.
In his testimony, Musk insisted that the phrase he tweeted off-the-cuff “was clearly a flippant insult, and nobody interpreted it to imply pedophile.”
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