A shareholder lawsuit claims Musk is to blame for an acquisition deal filled with conflicts of interest and never delivered on profits he promised.
Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk defended himself against what a lawyer described as an imperious management style in court on Monday, saying, “I don’t want to be the boss of anything.” In the Delaware Court of Chancery, Randall Baron, a lawyer for shareholders who is pressing for Musk to acknowledge mistakes in the acquisition of troubled company SolarCity, said Musk tries to run Tesla without interference and therefore bears responsibility for the company’s failures. Baron showed a video clip of Musk saying he liked running his own companies because no one could make him do what he doesn’t want to do, as well as characterizing Musk’s management style as imperious. Baron noted Musk once declared himself “Techno-king of Tesla” as an example of his imperiousness But Musk disagreed with the lawyer’s claims, saying, “I prefer to spend my time on design and engineering” rather than being the boss of others. For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below: On the witness stand Monday, Musk defended his company’s 2016 acquisition of SolarCity, a manufacturer of solar panels, against a lawsuit that claims he’s to blame for a deal that was rife with conflicts of interest and never delivered the profits he’d promised. And to the surprise of no one, the famously colorful billionaire did so in the most personally combative terms. “I think you are a bad human being,” Musk told Baron. “I have great respect for the court,” Musk later added, “but not for you, sir.” The long-running shareholder lawsuit asserts that Musk, who was SolarCity’s largest stakeholder and its chairman, and other Tesla directors breached their fiduciary duties in bowing to Musk’s wishes and agreeing to buy the company.
