Back in 2018 Elon Musk tweeted about the possibility of taking Tesla private.

Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018

Investor support is confirmed. Only reason why this is not certain is that it’s contingent on a shareholder vote. https://t.co/bIH4Td5fED

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018

It never happened and it turned out the funding was never really secured but those comments caused havoc with the stock price and Musk and Tesla were sued by investors who claimed they had lost substantial money as a result.

Tesla (TSLA) shares initially climbed 11% on the day of Musk’s original “funding secured” tweet, but they never reached that promised $420 level, reaching a high that day of $387.46. And they soon fell well below their pre-tweet price of $344, hitting $263.24 a month later, as it became clear that the funding was less than secure. That prompted the shareholder suit that is just now reaching trial after more than four years…

The lead plaintiff in the shareholder lawsuit, Glen Littleton, testified last month that he lost more than 75% of his investments following Musk’s “funding secured” tweet.

“I wanted to ensure my livelihood. This represented a threat to my livelihood,” he said of Tesla not, in fact, being taken private for $420 per share.

Musk tried to have the case, which was filed in California, moved to Texas where the company is currently headquartered but that effort was denied. Nevertheless, today a jury in San Francisco unanimously sided with Musk.

The federal judge in the case, Edward M. Chen, had already ruled that “funding secured” and Mr. Musk’s second statement were untrue, and that Mr. Musk was reckless when posting them.

The jurors — seven men and two women — deliberated for about an hour, finding that Mr. Musk’s statements did not cause the investors’ losses. The verdict allows Mr. Musk to claim vindication for a dark period in his professional life, when Tesla was struggling to increase production of its most affordable car, the Model 3.

“I thought he was crazy to try his chances at trial, given the stakes involved,” said Adam C. Pritchard, a law professor at the University of Michigan, noting the judge’s pretrial rulings. “You’re fighting with one hand behind your back in that situation — and yet he won.”

If he had lost, Mr. Musk and Tesla might have had to pay billions of dollars in damages to investors who said they had lost money when the company’s stock surged after his statements on Twitter and then tumbled after his plan fizzled.

Musk thanked “the wisdom of the people” in a tweet:

Thank goodness, the wisdom of the people has prevailed!

I am deeply appreciative of the jury’s unanimous finding of innocence in the Tesla 420 take-private case.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2023

Musk has talked many times about how close Tesla came to bankruptcy in 2017 when problems on the Model 3 line prevented the company from making many cars. He slept on a couch in the factory trying to fix the problems. And eventually they did get fixed and by 2019 Tesla’s stock was making huge advances.

A turn from losses to profits about a year after the tweet started Tesla shares on an extraordinary run, gaining 1520% from the day of the tweet to its record high in November 2021. That record close of $409.97 works out to $6,150 a share, when adjusted for the two stock splits since that day. Even with the 70% decline in Tesla shares from that all-time high to Friday’s close, shares are still up 384% since the close on the day of the 2018 tweet.

In any case, Musk testified at the trial that not everyone believes his tweets, no matter what he says.

On Friday, Musk took the stand for about 30 minutes and testified that his tweets do not cause Tesla’s stock price to move higher or lower. He pointed to an incident in May of 2020 when he tweeted that “Tesla stock price is too high.” The stock price dropped the day of his tweet but recovered and closed the year higher than it had opened.

Here’s that tweet:

Tesla stock price is too high imo

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 1, 2020

I don’t see anyone vowing to appeal this but I suppose that’s still an option. Still, everyone seems to agree this is a substantial win for Musk that will take significant pressure off him.