FORT WORTH, Texas — A Fort Worth judge for a civil suit involving X, formerly known as Twitter, has up to $50,000 invested in Tesla, both companies owned by Elon Musk, new records show.
According to a financial disclosure report, District Judge Reed O'Connor of the Northern District of Texas has between $15,000 and $50,000 invested in the electric car company.
Despite this, in a memorandum filed by O'Connor, he denied a motion by defendant Media Matters compelling X to amend their lawsuit to reflect that Tesla is an interested party in the case.
A rule of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires litigants to file "a complete list of all persons...or other legal entities that are financially interested in the outcome of the case."
However, O'Connor wrote in the ruling that Tesla was not a "financially interested" party.
"First, there is no evidence that shows Tesla has a direct financial interest in the outcome of this case," O'Connor wrote. "Tesla neither directly nor indirectly holds equity in X, Tesla is not a director or advisor, and it does not participate in the affairs of X."
Businesses frequently have connections with others without a legal or equitable interest, O'Connor argued.
"Consider the endless number of interested parties that would have to be disclosed if Defendants disclosure theory prevailed," he wrote.
O'Connor wrote that he has never been required to disclose fringe interest unrelated to "legal or equitable interest."
"And this makes sense because requiring this type of disclosure would create absurd results — potentially requiring any other company with executives on other boards to list those companies as financially interested," he wrote.
The lawsuit, filed by X in November 2023, accuses Media Matters, a nonprofit watchdog journalism organization, of defaming the social media platform by publishing an article titled "X has been placing ads for Apple, Brave, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to pro-Nazi content," claiming it was misleading.
According to X's terms of services, all legal disputes related to the terms of service will be heard in the Northern District of Texas. This is despite X's headquarters being located in Austin, which is in the Western District of Texas.
More Texas headlines:
