Tesla shareholder David Wagner has filed a lawsuit against the company after CEO Elon Musk sold a portion of his Tesla stock based on a Twitter poll he conducted. Wagner argues that Musk's behavior on social media has negatively impacted the price of the stock. Tesla stock is down almost 25% since reaching an all-time high of 1243.49 on Nov. 4.
In the lawsuit, Wagner called for an investigation into whether Musk continues to tweet carelessly in violation of a 2019 agreement, which requires any of his communication about Tesla over social media to be pre-approved by a securities lawyer.
Wagner is demanding records and books related to Musk's tweets, including documents to identify whether the stock sales tweets were reviewed before being shared with followers.
Last month, Musk tweeted about his proposal on selling 10% of his Tesla stock and asked his followers to vote on his decision.
Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.
Do you support this?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)November 6, 2021
He followed up with a second tweet about 10 minutes later, explaining why selling his Tesla stock would be his way of paying such a tax.
Musk has sold 12.9 million shares worth nearly $14 billion of Tesla shares as of Dec. 18.
In 2018, Musk settled a lawsuit by the SEC over his tweet on taking the company private, agreeing to have the Tesla's lawyers pre-approve tweets with material information about the company.
The Tesla CEO beneficially owned about 22.4% or 227.13 million shares in the company as of Dec. 31, 2020, according to a 13G/A filing done with the SEC in early February.
Tesla stock closed up 0.61% on Friday at 932.57.
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