United States District Judge Mark Pittman has denied xAI’s bid to block disclosure of Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX emails. claim Against Apple and OpenAI. Here are the details.
Musk will hand over more material for discovery
Last month, Apple, OpenAI, X and xAI legal teams asked United States Magistrate Judge Hal R. Ray Jr. to resolve a series of disagreements over the discovery process in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI. they held hearings in front of him.
The lawsuit stemmed from Musk’s dissatisfaction with Grok’s ranking on the App Store, which he claimed was the result. anti-competitive A deal between Apple and OpenAI due to their partnership to own the ChatGPT powerhouses of Siri and Apple Intelligence.
Judge Ray at the hearing was accepted X and xAI’s request to include Craig Federighi as a trustee also granted X and xAI’s request to compel Apple to hand over documents related to its recent agreement with Google to power Gemini’s new Siri.
In another ruling, Judge Ray accepted OpenAI’s argument that Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX emails should be searched for material relevant to the lawsuit.
The x and xAI layers initially told the court that these documents were beyond their control and supervision because they did not represent SpaceX or Tesla. Still, the argument failed to convince Judge Ray.
In the end, OpenAI’s argument that Musk “is the CEO of all of these companies and these are the accounts he clearly uses for business for all of these companies” won out, helped in part by the fact that “his CFO at X.AI had internal documents that he sent emails about X.AI business on a SpaceX account.”
X and XAI legal teams yesterday given appeal in an attempt to overturn Judge Ray’s decision. They also filed a motion to stay the order pending the court’s decision on the appeal.
Today, Judge Pittman referred those discovery disputes to Judge Ray (general practice in federal litigation). was rejected X and xAI’s motion affirmed Judge Ray’s findings and ultimately denied X and xAI’s motion to stay the judgment.
Judge Pittman wrote in his order:
Since there is reason to believe that Musk conducts X and/or xAI business on his SpaceX and Tesla business email accounts, the emails are discoverable and should be produced. That evidence, combined with Musk’s ownership and high-level roles in these companies, compels the Court to hold this.
And
As noted, the record provides specific reasons to believe that Plaintiffs are conducting business on Musk’s other email accounts. For example, xAI’s CFO sent xAI financial updates to Musk’s SpaceX email address. That alone is enough to compel discovery here because X and xAI have the right to obtain documents from a CEO who uses non-company email accounts to conduct company business — whether or not those are personal email accounts.
Judge Pittman did not set a deadline for production of these emails.
At a May 13 hearing, Judge Ray asked attorneys for X and xAI how long they would need to prepare the emails, saying the legal team did not know for sure, adding that “it will take some time, but if ordered, we will move as quickly as possible.”
It’s worth checking out on Amazon
FTC: We use automatic affiliate links that generate income. More.
