A California state judge on Friday rejected Tesla chief Elon Musk's argument that the suit filed by a university student was baseless and should be thrown out as an attempt to silence the billionaire's right to free speech.
Randeep Hothi, a Michigan University student, sued Musk for defamation after Musk said Hothi nearly killed a Tesla employee. This was after an incident in February 2019, when Hothi was sitting in his car in the Tesla Fremont Factory parking lot. Security personnel asked Hothi to leave—Tesla alleged that Hothi exited at high speed and nearly killed one of their employees. In a second instance, in April 2019, Hothi spotted a Tesla automobile on the highway fitted with numerous cameras and company personnel in the car. Hothi believed it to be a demonstration of the car’s autopilot features and filmed the vehicle. Tesla alleged that Hothi drove erratically.
Hothi, who has a Twitter handle called ‘@skabooshka’, said both incidents are harmless. Hothi said he was researching at the Tesla sales centre in Fremont, California. After Musk complained about Hothi in an email to an online tech editor, Hothi said Musk triggered an online hate campaign against him and filed a defamation suit against the billionaire in August in Alameda County Superior Court.
Tesla in the meantime, acquired a restraining order against Hothi, for “almost killing their employee”.
Hothi, a Tesla critic, has said that Musk hasn’t been able to live up to his promises to deliver new Tesla cars and technologies. In April 2019, when there were reports of Tesla putting out a new ‘Model 3’ inventory online for browsing and immediate delivery, Hothi tweeted, “We have no backlog, are slashing prices, still cannot generate cash flow or profitability, and are slammed with inventory ready for immediate delivery. Good luck on raising capital.”
Hothi’s lawyer in July 2019 had said that Hothi “was critically researching Tesla’s extravagant claims” about the capabilities of its “full self-driving” systems, the LA Times reported.
Hothi is a doctoral candidate in Asian languages and cultures at the University of Michigan. He is interested in studying the Sikh diaspora. He is a part of a global group, which posts content on Twitter with the hashtag $TSLAQ. They consist of former Tesla employees and students like Hothi and criticise Musk and Tesla, often leading to arguments on Twitter and online trolling. Hothi has demystified several of Tesla’s claims. Hothi, through footage obtained via a flying drone, debunked Musk’s claim that Tesla vehicles were assembled through automation. The footage revealed that the vehicles were assembled by hand.
Members of the group critiquing Musk and Tesla use pseudonyms to protect their identity, but, his identity was revealed by an anonymous account in 2018.
Hothi is using crowdfunding platform GoFundMe to sue Musk. Julia Spain, a judge for the Superior Court of Alameda County in California, in her ruling wrote that there are issues suitable for a trial over whether Musk's statements were true.
