A Delaware judge has again denied Elon Musk's bid to award himself a pay package at Tesla worth $56bn, upholding her own earlier ruling that the process leading to it was "deeply flawed" due to his power over the company's board. The shareholder vote he organized to "ratify" it was meaningless, she determined.
"Were the court to condone the practice of allowing defeated parties to create new facts for the purpose of revising judgments, lawsuits would become interminable," Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick wrote in her opinion.
The pay package would have been the largest in recorded history. After the earlier courtroom denial, Musk moved Tesla's headquarters to Texas from Delaware, where the lawsuit played out. He described the latest ruling as "absolute corruption" without elaboration and promised to appeal it further.
Musk—often seen shadowing president-elect Donald Trump after an election campaign significantly funded by Musk himself—is nonetheless enjoying a rapid expansion of his personal wealth and is again the world's richest person. Markets expect his involvement in government to yield favorable treatment for his companies, though it's not clear how much power his indistinct government role as a cost-cutter, itself shared with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, will actually have.
Previously:
• Judge to hear $7.2B plaintiff's lawyers fee request in Elon's Tesla pay package fiasco
• Lawyers who blocked Elon Musk's $51bn pay package want $6bn fee
• Judge rejects Elon Musk's full self-dealing pay package
