Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk and the electric car company’s board were sued by a shareholder who accused Musk of violating his 2018 deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission on the use of Twitter.
According to an unsealed complaint on Thursday night at the Delaware Chancellery Court, Musk’s “erratic” tweets, including a post on May 1 that Tesla’s stock price was “too high” and the Tesla’s failure to monitor its compliance with the SEC agreement has exposed shareholders to billions of dollars in losses.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The SEC deal resulted from Musk’s tweet in August 2018 that he was considering going public with Tesla and had “guaranteed financing” for a possible $ 72 billion transaction.
He and Tesla agreed the following month to pay $ 20 million in civil fines to settle with the regulator, and Musk agreed to have Tesla’s lawyers examine some of his tweets in advance.
The shareholder lawsuit said Musk continued to tweet without the necessary prior approval. He seeks that Musk and other Tesla directors pay damages to the company for violating its fiduciary duties.