Three lawsuits involving Elon Musk, including one over his giant pay package, will be reassigned after the presiding judge appeared to endorse a LinkedIn post critical of the billionaire.
Kathaleen McCormick, the chief judge in Delaware’s business court, is a longtime bugbear for Musk, forcing him to complete his $44 billion takeover of Twitter after he got cold feet and invalidating his Tesla pay package in a decision that was partly overturned on appeal. Musk cited “activist judges” in his decision to move Tesla’s legal home from Delaware to Texas, which set off a mini-exodus of ideologically aligned tech companies.
McCormick wrote Monday that she hadn’t seen, or meant to like (actually, it was a heart-in-hands emoji) the LinkedIn post and rejected Musk’s lawyers’ accusations of bias, but said she would hand off the cases. This isn’t the first time a Delaware judge has gotten in trouble on LinkedIn; it may be time for a policy.