Musk, SEC Given Another Week to Settle Twitter Dispute

A federal judge in New York City has given Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission until April 25 to resolve a dispute over Musk’s tweets.

The two sides had been ordered to reach a settlement by yesterday to avoid a court ruling on the SEC’s claim that Musk has violated an earlier agreement to have his tweets screened by a company lawyer before posting them.

The spat began last autumn when Musk tweeted that he might take Tesla private and had secured the funding to do so. That wasn’t true. But Tesla’s stock price surged until he acknowledged that there was no funding deal.

The episode resulted in an October settlement in which Tesla and Musk each paid $20 million fines, Musk stepped down as chairman and he agreed to submit all future tweets relevant to shareholders to a Tesla review panel.

But in February Musk tweeted that Tesla would build 500,000 cars this year. He quickly said he meant to say the company would reach an annualized production rate of 500,000 cars by the end of 2019.

The SEC promptly claimed he was in contempt of the earlier agreement. During subsequent hearings, Musk admitted he hadn’t submitted any tweets for review since the October settlement. He also argued that asking him to do so was a violation of his First Amendment right to free speech.