A US judge tossed the class action lawsuit accusing Elon Musk and his company Tesla of manipulating the Dogecoin (DOGE) market.
A group of disgruntled DOGE investors sued Musk in 2022, accusing the business magnate of orchestrating a pump-and-dump via a series of public comments about the popular memecoin.
Musk’s lawyers have filed multiple motions to dismiss the lawsuit, and the Dogecoin investors responded by filing amended complaints.
That back-and-forth ended this week when District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein sided with Musk’s legal team and closed the case.
Hellerstein drew attention to the specific Musk quotes highlighted in the complaint, noting that he “failed to see” how the Tesla CEO manipulated the market or facilitated a pump-and-dump.
“These paragraphs allege statements by Musk on ‘Twitter’ to the effect that Dogecoin might be his favorite currency and that he had purchased some for his son, that Dogecoin is the people’s crypto and the future currency of Earth, that Dogecoin might become the standard for the global financial system and the currency of the internet, that Musk agreed to become Dogecoin’s CEO, and that Musk might put a ‘literal’ Dogecoin in SpaceX and fly it to the moon and that Dogecoin would pay for the mission, that Tesla vehicles could be bought with Dogecoin, and the like.
These statements are aspirational and puffery, not factual and susceptible to being falsified. They cannot be the basis of 10b-5 lawsuit… and no reasonable investor could rely upon them.”
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