A Delaware judge overseeing a lawsuit against Elon Musk has appeared in at least one LinkedIn search — from his lawyers.
Attorneys for the Tesla CEO have asked Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick to recuse herself from a shareholder lawsuit against him because of her reactions to a LinkedIn post criticizing him.
“In light of the Court’s recent public support of LinkedIn posts that create a perception of bias against Mr. Musk in these cases, recusal is necessary and warranted,” they wrote in a Tuesday night court filing. “These cases should be re-assigned to another random-drawn judicial officer of this Court.”
The recusal motion was filed in a set of lawsuits brought by Tesla shareholders who allege Musk lied about selling his Tesla shares in the lead-up to his 2022 purchase of Twitter, enabling him to profit illegally. Musk has denied wrongdoing.
According to the Tuesday filing, McCormick reacted positively to a LinkedIn post from a lawyer who won a separate case in California, accusing Musk of misleading Twitter shareholders. The post celebrated the law firm that brought the case for “standing up for the little guy against the richest man in the world.”
Musk’s attorneys said McCormick, who has ruled against Musk in other high-profile cases, put effort into reacting to one of the posts criticizing him. She chose to react with “Support” rather than a mere “Like,” they wrote.
“The particular reaction selected by Chancellor McCormick’s account — ‘Support,’ symbolized by a heart hovering in an outstretched hand— requires deliberate selection, an effort beyond clicking the generic ‘like’ button,” they wrote. “Of about 121 reactions to the post, 93 chose the default ‘like’ and only one selected the outstretched heart in hand to ‘support’ the post.”
McCormick’s LinkedIn account appeared to be deactivated on March 23, the lawyers wrote. Business Insider was unable to locate her account. McCormick’s chambers declined to comment.
In her own letter dated Tuesday, McCormick said she didn’t recall even seeing the post.
“LinkedIn recently reported that I hit the heart-in-hand icon intended to show a sign of ‘support’ concerning a LinkedIn post about Mr. Musk,” she wrote. “I do not ‘support’ the post. I also have not read the post, aside from the text visible in the screenshot that was sent by text to me last night.”
The judge said she “reported the suspicious activity to LinkedIn” and was then locked out of her account.
McCormick serves as the chancellor — effectively, the chief judge — of the Delaware Court of Chancery. She has previously overseen two other cases involving Musk, neither of which turned out as he hoped.
In 2022, she oversaw a case Twitter brought against Musk to force him to go through with his purchase of the social media company after he tried to back out. After McCormick ruled in Twitter’s favor early in the litigation, Musk agreed to go through with the purchase before the case concluded.
McCormick also sided with shareholders in a 2024 ruling that struck down Musk’s $55 billion Tesla pay package for himself, though Delaware’s Supreme Court later overturned her ruling.
McCormick’s decision spurred Musk to move his companies from Delaware to Texas, which has become a minor trend in the business world.
Musk’s attorneys said the LinkedIn shenanigans extended throughout McCormick’s chambers.
In their filing, they said a member of McCormick’s staff “liked” a LinkedIn post from an attorney who posted a screenshot of a news article about Musk’s testimony in the California case.
In that case, the now-X Corp. CEO testified that he believed McCormick was “extremely biased” against him.
“So many people who should be so deeply ashamed of themselves seem incapable of being so, and I don’t think it’s great for civil society,” the attorney who posted the screenshot wrote in the LinkedIn post that was “liked” by a member of the judge’s staff.
Musk lost the case.
Read the full article here
