Friday Frivolity: Somebody Can’t Take a 420 Joke
It is well documented that the world’s richest man has the sense-of-humor of a sniggering adolescent. Sissi Cao recounts the history on Observer. com He mused about taking Twitter private at $420/share and eventually acquired it for $54.20/share. He embedded 420 into his Tesla products, including pricing a vehicle at $69,420, because the only thing funnier than a lame marijuana reference is a lame sexual reference, especially since a large group of his followers consists of incels. He makes random 420 references on Twitter whenever he finds occasion to do so, presumably because they help him score points in the attention economy.
On March 20, a jury found Mr. Musk liable for deliberately misleading investors in the months prior to his acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion. Six days later, his attorney, Alex Spiro, wrote to the presiding judge. Here is his opening:
I am writing on behalf of my client Elon Musk to alert the Court to a serious issue with the verdict indicating that the jury’s solemn process to find the truth based only on the faithful application of the law to the evidence—without favor, bias, or outside influence—was corrupted in this case. The jury used its verdict to mock Mr. Musk and the process, making a numerical joke—coloring and emphasizing in bright blue the number $4.20 in its damages verdict—to send a message and signal to my client. The jury’s bizarre and highly questionable method of completing the form, this “joke” (which was no doubt intentional), was just the final example in a parade of issues and events that illustrated and confirmed that Mr. Musk was deprived his right to a fair trial adjudicated by an impartial jury dedicated to finding the truth.
I’m sure the judge found the letter edifying. Mr. Spiro uses words like “solemn,” “truth,” “faithful,” “impartial,” and “fair,” with such grandiosity, I almost thought he was running for office.
The letter then proceeds to make a series of allegations which derive from the premise that Mr. Musk never could have received a fair trial in San Francisco. Mr. Spiro then returns to his concern about the number 420.
However, the jury revealed when completing its verdict that its decision to find liability in the first place was driven by a desire to send a message to Mr. Musk, rather than to faithfully apply the law. When writing its damages verdict, the jury wrote each deflation number in black ink, except for August 9, 2022. On that date, the jury colored in blue ink and larger font the number $4.20 to draw attention to it. Ex. A at 2. The bright blue number in a sea of black figures immediately jumps off the page, as was the apparent intent. The jury’s emphasis on the $4.20 number, which had no significance to its damages determination, but appears to be a mocking reference to a number previously associated with Mr. Musk, shows that the verdict was a mockery of justice: a commentary not on whether Mr. Musk committed securities fraud (he did not) but on the jury’s views about Mr. Musk himself.
Given that the letter concedes that the $4.20 number had no significance to the damages determination, I don’t know what Mr. Spiro is on about. Yes, it is unfortunate if the jury decided to descend to Mr. Musk’s level of banal humor, but if that is what is going on here, I have to admit, it is at least a ten times better joke than the 42 similar jokes Mr. Musk has made.
The most surprising thing about this letter is that it was written. The second most surprising thing is that it requests no relief. The letter claims that there is a need for “further inquiry.” It does not request that the judge set aside the verdict, nor does it request a new trial. If the judge does undertake further inquiry and the jurors respond, “We just thought it was funny, and we thought the defendant would find it funny,” then what?