Judge Shifts Cases After Musk's Bias Complaint

A Delaware judge is shifting several lawsuits involving Elon Musk to other jurists after the billionaire challenged her impartiality over a social media interaction, though she rejected his bid to force her off the cases. Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick said in a letter Monday that she would not step aside for bias, calling Musk's recusal request "false" and pointing out that she dismissed a lawsuit against him last year, the Hill reports. "The motion for recusal is denied," she wrote, while agreeing to transfer three cases tied to the Tesla CEO, including the high-profile challenge to his roughly $56 billion Tesla compensation plan that she had previously struck down as improperly negotiated.

Musk's legal team had cited McCormick's apparent engagement with a LinkedIn post that applauded the billionaire's recent courtroom loss in California. A jury there found he misled Twitter shareholders and depressed the company's share price ahead of his 2022 acquisition of the platform, now called X, per CNBC. McCormick said her LinkedIn account showed a "support" reaction to the post, but she denied endorsing it and said she did not recall clicking the button. "I either did not click the 'support' icon at all, or I did so accidentally," she wrote, per the Financial Times. Still, she said, "disproportionate media attention" could undermine confidence in the court, and she granted the motion to reassign the matters while maintaining that she is not biased against Musk or his co-defendants.