It all boils down to what, exactly, Elon Musk meant when he called a British cave explorer “pedo guy.”
A lawyer for Mr. Musk argued in a Los Angeles court on Tuesday that the brash Silicon Valley billionaire had used the term on Twitter last year merely as a generic insult. A lawyer for the target of Mr. Musk’s ire, the explorer Vernon Unsworth, argued that it had been part of campaign to harm Mr. Unsworth’s reputation and paint him as a pedophile.
Those were the opening volleys in the trial of Mr. Unsworth’s defamation suit against Mr. Musk, which is expected to feature a highly anticipated witness: Mr. Musk himself.
His lawyer, Alex Spiro, characterized the insult as an expression from Mr. Musk’s South African youth.
“These are joking talking tweets in a fight between men,” Mr. Spiro said. “It was a joking, deleted, apologized for, responsive tweet. A JDART.”
The trial stems from a war of words that took place between the two men in the summer of 2018 as they raced to offer assistance to a youth soccer team that had been trapped by rising waters in a cave in Thailand, an ordeal that transfixed the world.
Mr. Unsworth, who claimed in court documents that he had been exploring that cave system for six years, quickly became involved in the rescue effort. Soon after, Mr. Musk sent a team of engineers from the companies he leads, including Tesla, SpaceX and the Boring Company, to help as well.
At the time, Mr. Musk suggested the use of a small submarine, which Mr. Unsworth brushed off in a CNN interview, saying Mr. Musk could “stick his submarine where it hurts.”
Mr. Musk fired back in a series of angry tweets, referring to Mr. Unsworth as “pedo guy.” He later deleted the tweets, explaining that they were issued “in anger after Mr. Unsworth said several untruths & suggested I engage in a sexual act with the mini-sub.”
Mr. Musk passionately engages with fans and critics alike on Twitter, where he has 29.8 million followers. Even after Tuesday’s proceedings began, he was using the platform for fun, chatting with users about plans for the new Tesla Cybertruck and about the element hydrogen.
But his tweets have backfired on Mr. Musk in the past. Last fall, for example, he was replaced as chairman of the Tesla board as part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over a tweet in which he said the company had the funding to go private.
And despite deleting the offending tweets about Mr. Unsworth, Mr. Musk continued to attack him using information from a private investigator who had reached out to Mr. Musk to suggest that the explorer had “skeletons in his cupboard,” the billionaire’s lawyers said in a September court filing.
According to that document, Mr. Musk paid the investigator $50,000 to look into Mr. Unsworth. Mr. Musk then relayed some of what the investigator had told him to a BuzzFeed News reporter, accusing Mr. Unsworth of having a 12-year-old bride, a claim that Mr. Unsworth has denied. BuzzFeed later reported that the investigator had been convicted of fraud and spent 18 months in a British prison for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a business he co-founded.
In a court filing on Monday, Mr. Musk’s lawyers appeared to lay the groundwork for a First Amendment defense, arguing that the jury should be instructed to determine whether Mr. Musk’s words qualified as statements of fact or merely opinion. The lawyers also argued that Mr. Unsworth is a public figure rather than a private one, a distinction that would make it more difficult to prove defamation. The judge had already said last month that Mr. Unsworth is a private figure.
In addition to Mr. Musk, Mr. Unsworth’s lawyers said they might call to the stand several executives at Mr. Musk’s companies, some of the other caving experts involved in the rescue and Mr. Unsworth’s longtime girlfriend. Mr. Musk’s witness list includes many of those same individuals.
Neither Tesla nor SpaceX responded to requests for comment, and Mr. Spiro declined to comment.
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