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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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I mean.. maybe. But why would they do a shareholder vote to immunize themselves against a frivolous, politically-motivated lawsuit filed by a guy who had 8 shares of Tesla? Shareholder votes are not free.

And would the judge have really listened to the vote anyway? It's easy for her to say now. I'll admit I really don't have a lot of patience for the legal details when it seems that judges just use them as justifications for doing the things they were going to do anyway.

What is the evidence that the plaintiff of judge are politically motivated? "Company fails to take lawsuit seriously, gets wrecked" does not sound like a crazy thing? I would probably describe the Hogan-Gawker lawsuit similarly.

It's not just the judge saying this, she cites a bunch of Delaware precedent that votes during litigation can function as ratification for the corporate acts in question. Tesla (for obvious reasons) cannot find a single precedent that post-judgement shareholder votes can serve as a basis for overturning that judgement.

Yes, by begging the question and assuming that the judge is correct on all aspects, then clearly Tesla is in the wrong here.

The evidence is that it’s absurd to bring a lawsuit against a company that made you a ton of money?

That hadn't happened when the lawsuit was filed. OP gets the order of events wrong. The lawsuit was filed 5 months after the package was awarded, well before performance targets were hit.

It's even more absurd to bring a lawsuit against a company for either making you a ton of money (if targets, which included market cap, are hit) or getting its CEO to work for you for free (if they aren't).

This logic justifies literally any pay award. The whole point of the suit is that the process by which Musk's award amount was reached was biased in his favor, not a neutral process.

It doesn't justify literally any pay award, just those with strongly positive EV. "We'll pay out 10% of the massive unexpected increase in value" isn't a crazy division. (and you can tell it's unexpected, because if it was expected you'd buy up the price of shares until it was no longer massive)

The whole point of the suit is that the process by which Musk's award amount was reached was biased in his favor, not a neutral process.

In that case I absolutely insist that every complaining shareholder be instead given what they deserve. Buy out their shares at 2018 prices (adjusted for NASDAQ growth) instead of forcing them to suffer from the results of the unfair outcome, and let every penny of the difference come from Elon's pocket.