A lawyer for the diver who helped rescue kids from a flooded cave in Thailand said he’ll seek a retrial in his client’s defamation suit against Elon Musk after learning why jurors nixed the case on Friday, a report said.
Lawyer Mark Stephens told The Mirror on Saturday that post-verdict interviews with the Los Angeles jurors indicated they decided Musk didn’t defame Vernon Unsworth by calling him a “pedo guy” because the Tesla CEO didn’t specifically name his client in the tweet.
“We all know jurors make mistakes on occasion,” Stephens told the paper. “The jury has given leave and license to allow anyone to make accusations of serious criminality without accountability.”
Stephens said he plans to file papers for a retrial by Christmas, the report said.
“That is a serious problem. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a bullying billionaire or a penniless troll, that behavior is destructive,” he said.
Musk was hauled into court over the heated 2018 exchange with Unsworth over the rescue of a team of young Thai soccer players trapped in an underground cave.
After Musk and his SpaceX employees built a mini-submarine to aid with the rescue, Unsworth blasted the plan to CNN as a “PR stunt.”
The Paypal co-founder responded on July 15, 2018, with a tweet dubbing to Unsworth “pedo guy” to his millions of followers.
At trial, Musk testified, “no one interpreted it to mean pedophile.”
The South African-born Musk, 48, also claimed the term was often used when he was growing up to mean “creepy old man.”