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On December 6, a federal jury in the Central District of California found that Tesla CEO Elon Musk did not defame cave diver Vernon Unsworth by referring to him in a tweet as “pedo guy.” Unsworth v. Musk, No. 2:18-cv-08048 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 6, 2019). Unsworth, who helped rescue a boys’ soccer team from a flooded cave in Thailand in July 2018, alleged that a series of tweets Musk published to his nearly 30 million Twitter followers were defamatory, falsely accused Mr. Unsworth of being a pedophile and child rapist, and caused Unsworth worldwide damage to his reputation and emotional distress. The jury deliberated for less than one hour before finding in favor of Musk.

During a CNN interview following the 2018 rescue, Unsworth had criticized Musk’s showing up to the cave site with a mini-submarine as a “PR stunt,” and said that the mini-submarine “had absolutely no chance of working” to save the boys. Unsworth’s complaint alleged that Musk retaliated against this criticism with a series of defamatory tweets and a series of defamatory emails sent to a Buzzfeed News reporter.Continue Reading Does Elon Musk’s Defamation Defense Verdict Spell “Open Season” for Social Media Insults? Answer: Nope.

This Article is part of a series monitoring developments with regard to California Assembly Bill 5 and its impact on the entertainment industry.

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed into law Assembly Bill 5 (“AB5” or the “Bill”), which redefines the distinction between an employee and an independent contractor. AB5 is primarily targeted at gig economy companies such as Uber and Grubhub, whose workers had been classified as independent contractors up to this point. Proponents of AB5 argued that many gig economy workers worked full time but received none of the benefits commonly associated with full time employment—including overtime, minimum wage, and workers’ compensation. Consequently, AB5 was touted as providing increased benefits and rights to a growing gig economy workforce. An additional impetus for AB5 was the legislature’s desire to stem financial losses to the state as a result of worker misclassification, including the loss of tax revenues.Continue Reading Assembly Bill 5: Guilds Issue Joint Statement Advocating for Continued Use of Loan-Outs