A lawsuit accusing Elon Musk of rigging Dogecoin is ending.
TakeAway Points:
- A lawsuit accusing Elon Musk of manipulating Dogecoin closed.
- According to a file with the National Highway Traffic Administration, Tesla is voluntarily recalling 2,431 Cybertrucks in order to fix the drive inverters that are faulty.
- This is the sixth recall in a year for Tesla’s angular steel pickup, the Cybertruck.
Lawsuit closes
Investors in the cryptocurrency who said the world’s richest person and his electric car company Tesla committed fraud and insider trading are withdrawing their appeal from an Aug. 29 dismissal of their case.
They are also withdrawing a bid to sanction Musk’s lawyers for allegedly interfering with the appeal, including by demanding payment of their hefty legal fees.
Musk and Tesla, meanwhile, withdrew their motion to sanction the investors’ lawyer for allegedly pursuing a “frivolous” case with ever-changing legal theories to “extort a quick handout.”
A stipulation dismissing the appeal and both sides’ motions was filed on Thursday night in federal court in Manhattan. It requires approval by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein.
The lawsuit
Investors accused Musk of using Twitter posts, an appearance on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” and other stunts to trade dogecoin at their expense, including by timing trades to Musk’s public statements and activities.
In the Aug. 29 dismissal, Hellerstein said reasonable investors could not prove securities fraud by relying on Musk’s tweets, including that dogecoin was the future currency of Earth and could be flown to the moon by his company SpaceX.
The judge also said he did not understand the investors’ related market manipulation and insider trading claims.
Investors originally sought $258 billion and amended their complaint four times in two years.
Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it X.
On Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump picked Musk and biotechnology company founder Vivek Ramaswany to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, whose acronym echoes dogecoin’s name.
The case is Gorog et al v. Musk et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-05037.
Tesla initiates sixth Cybertruck recall in a year
Tesla is recalling 2,431 Cybertrucks to replace defective drive inverters, according to notices made public by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Wednesday.
It’s the sixth recall of the Cybertruck since the angular steel pickup went on sale about a year ago. The Cybertruck sells in the U.S. for a base price of around $80,000.
Tesla addressed the previous Cybertruck recall with an over-the-air software update to fix an issue that caused images from the truck’s backup cameras to not display correctly after the driver shifted into reverse. The latest Cybertruck recall requires the replacement of a part called a drive inverter, which provides power to the wheels of the vehicle.
“If the inverter stops producing torque, the driver loses the ability to apply torque to the vehicle using the accelerator pedal resulting in a loss of propulsion, which may increase the risk of a collision,” Tesla wrote in a statement.
The Cybertruck became the third-best-selling fully electric vehicle in the U.S. during the third quarter of 2024, behind Telsa’s Model Y and Model 3 EVs.
Tesla is currently facing four known NHTSA investigations looking into possible safety defects in its vehicles. The most serious investigation concerns whether the company’s premium driver assistance system, marketed as “Full Self-Driving Supervised,” is safe to use in reduced visibility conditions such as glaring sunlight and fog.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has clashed with NHTSA and other federal regulators for years. That tension is now in the spotlight following the election victory last week of President-elect Donald Trump.
As the principal backer of Trump’s campaign, Musk has been granted a role in a new office Trump called the Department of Government Efficiency. While the office hasn’t yet been formed or funded by Congress, Musk has said he intends to use his influence to cut federal spending and regulations, and to change federal motor vehicle safety standards that are implemented and enforced, in part, by NHTSA.
