Elon Musk has decided to settle a defamation lawsuit against him for $10,000. The suit was brought against him by Randeep Hothi, who was accused by Musk in an email of nearly killing a Tesla security guard. There was no evidence to back up this claim.
Musk took to Twitter earlier this year promising not to surrender an unjust case against him. D. Gill Sperlein, one of Hothi’s lawyers, said in a statement made today: “Last year, Musk famously promised that he would never ‘settle an unjust case.’ Yet, he has asked Mr. Hothi to accommodate him. We welcome Musk’s belated acknowledgment that this case was just.”
Who Is Randeep Hothi?
Hothi was a member of the Tesla short community — members who bet against the American automaker. Hothi originally gained notoriety for questioning Elon Musk’s early approach to the Model 3, using the handle @skabooshka on Twitter. Musk had originally intended for the Tesla Model 3 to be assembled by state-of-the-art robots with rapid speed, and almost devoid of humans entirely. Skeptical of these claims, Hothi camped out outside the Fremont factory.
What Hothi saw was the erection of a tent that was used to finish the Model 3s, with the advanced robots later being pulled out of service and a more conventional production line taking its place. While Hothi may have been right about the production of the Model 3, Musk managed to turn it around, with the company narrowly avoiding bankruptcy in 2018 but going on to market success.
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By then, Hothi was on Tesla’s radar, and guards were instructed to eject the graduate student. In 2019 Hothi pulled into a publicly accessible Tesla factory parking lot. Despite claiming he was going to visit the on-site showroom, Hothi was intercepted by a guard. While he complied with the request to leave the lot, Hothi passed the guard closely, though anything that happened physically was unclear. The Los Angeles Times reports that Tesla sent the footage to local law enforcement in a bid to get Hothi arrested but without luck.
Hothi continued to criticize Tesla, doubting Elon Musk’s claims that the company’s Autopilot system would develop into a car that could be capable of driving itself from LA to New York by the end of 2017. Tesla later won a temporary restraining order against Hothi after he followed and took photos of a Tesla-owned vehicle on test. Tesla withdrew the case when the judge ordered the company to enter the videos captured by the test vehicle into evidence.
How Did Musk Defame Hothi?
In 2019, Aaron Greenspan, another Tesla critic, shared emails between Musk and himself. While Greenspan has been known to share such emails in the past, and he claims that at no point were the emails marked as confidential. The comments made against Hothi landed Musk in hot water.
“[A]s for the people you mention below, they have actively harassed and, in the case of Hothi, almost killed Tesla employees. What was a sideswipe when Hothi hit one of our people could easily have been a death with 6 inches of difference,” wrote Musk.
This claim, without evidence to back it up, was enough for Hothi to file a defamation suit against the billionaire. “I brought this case to defend my work, clear my name, and send a message,” said Hothi. “I believe I’ve accomplished that, thanks in no small part to Musk, whose own behavior over the last year has highlighted the need to scrutinize his every word and deed. This case was about taking a stand, not seeking fame or money. I feel vindicated.”