Elon Musk’s Lawyers Face Defeat in Trying to Get Defamation Suit Dismissed

Elon Musk has had another legal blow as his lawyers failed to get a defamation suit filed against him thrown out.

Ben Brody, a Jewish college student, sued the billionaire in October after Musk, Tesla‘s CEO and the owner of the social media platform X, incorrectly identified him as a member of a neo-Nazi group in Oregon who took part in a violent street brawl.

Musk’s lawyers filed a motion to have the lawsuit dismissed, but on May 29, Mark Bankston, Brody’s lawyer, said it had failed.

“Elon Musk’s attorneys called it ‘a shakedown,’ but I am proud to announce that today a Texas judge has rejected Musk’s attempts to dismiss the lawsuit I brought on behalf of Ben Brody, a Jewish college student who was falsely accused of being a neo-Nazi rioter,” Bankston wrote on X.

“Musk attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed through ‘anti-SLAPP,’ which required us to produce ‘clear and specific evidence’ for every element of Brody’s claim. Despite facing this challenge at the outset of the case, we prevailed,” he continued in another post.

Newsweek has contacted Musk’s lawyers in this case and Bankston for comment by email.

In June, Musk wrote on X, “Looks like one is a college student (who wants to join the govt),” which Brody said in his lawsuit was about him.

The 22-year-old said X users had misidentified him as part of the brawl, but that Musk made the situation worse for him by reposting their claims. He is asking for more than $1 million and has accused Musk of “astonishingly reckless conduct.”

In February, Musk filed a motion to dismiss Brody’s motion for discovery, which wanted to depose the billionaire.

Brody’s lawsuit called for questioning Musk to “explore concepts of negligence and malice.” In his motion, Musk rejected that claim, saying it was a “transparent effort to harass” him and ensure he paid more in litigation fees.

“Musk is the only source of direct evidence as to his state of mind when making the statement, and Musk will be able to testify about issues involving his level of care,” Brody said in his filing.

There has been extra scrutiny on X, formerly Twitter, since Musk bought the platform in October 2022 over claims of hate speech increasing on the site.

Musk sued progressive media watchdog Media Matters after it published a report that said posts praising Nazis and white nationalists ran on X alongside ads of major businesses—including Apple, Comcast, NBCUniversal, IBM and Oracle. In his defamation suit, Musk said all but Oracle had pulled their advertising from the platform.