Jury finds Musk owes damages to Twitter investors for his tweets

On Friday, a jury in California determined that Elon Musk had misled investors in Twitter via public statements that depressed the price of the company’s stock ahead of Musk’s purchase of the service.

Because this was a class action lawsuit, Musk is likely to owe damages to a huge range of investors—payments that may ultimately reach billions of dollars.

A number of those investors started a suit that was certified as a class action, claiming that the statements defrauded them and that Musk made them intentionally as part of a larger scheme.

The jury rejected arguments about this larger scheme but found Musk liable for the tweets.

While damages have yet to be determined, lawyers for the plaintiffs reportedly say that they could ultimately reach as high as $2.6 billion .