Elon Musk seems to be on as President Donald Trump speaks on the U.S.-Saudi Funding Discussion board on the John F. Kennedy Heart for the Performing Arts in Washington, Nov. 19, 2025.
Brendan Smialowski | Afp | Getty Pictures
Choose Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware mentioned Monday that she’s reassigning circumstances involving Elon Musk after the Tesla CEO accused her of bias as a result of what gave the impression to be her help of a social media publish important of him.
Musk formally accused McCormick of bias final week, and his attorneys demanded that the Delaware Court docket of Chancery decide recuse herself from two Tesla lawsuits. The LinkedIn publish that McCormick allegedly responded to with an emoji touted a courtroom verdict that might value Musk upwards of $2 billion for defrauding Twitter traders.
McCormick mentioned in a letter to Musk’s attorneys final week that she did not intend to click on any emoji expressing help for the publish, and that she had reported doable “suspicious exercise” on her account to LinkedIn.
In her order on Monday, McCormick denied the movement for recusal, however mentioned she was reassigning three Musk-related actions now earlier than the Court docket of Chancery to different judges.
“The movement for recusal rests on a false premise — that I help a LinkedIn publish about Mr. Musk, which I don’t the truth is help,” she wrote. “I’m not biased towards the defendants in these actions. In reality, I dismissed a go well with towards Mr. Musk simply final 12 months. The movement for recusal is denied. However the movement for reassignment is granted.”
McCormick grew to become the goal of Musk’s ire after she ordered Tesla to rescind his 2018 CEO pay bundle, value about $56 billion in choices, when she presided over the shareholder go well with Tornetta v. Musk.
Musk moved his companies, together with Tesla, out of Delaware, incorporating them in Texas and Nevada and inspiring others to do the identical.
In 2025, Delaware’s Supreme Court docket mentioned Musk’s 2018 pay bundle have to be restored, deciding that the decrease courtroom’s choice by McCormick was too excessive a treatment and didn’t give Tesla an opportunity to say what a good compensation for Musk must be.
McCormick wrote in her order on Monday that “disproportionate media consideration surrounding a decide’s dealing with of an motion is detrimental to the administration of justice.” She mentioned she has “full religion” in her colleagues’ talents to adjudicate the circumstances.
Tesla and Musk nonetheless have two circumstances continuing via Delaware courtroom. One issues Tesla administrators’ compensation, and the opposite is a consolidated shareholder go well with filed by traders alleging that Musk breached his fiduciary duties to Tesla when he began a possible competitor in synthetic intelligence, xAI.
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