Delaware judge reassigns Elon Musk cases after accusation of bias

Judge Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware said Monday that she’s reassigning cases involving Elon Musk after the Tesla CEO accused her of bias due to what appeared to be her support of a social media post critical of him.

Musk formally accused McCormick of bias last week, and his attorneys demanded that the Delaware Court of Chancery judge recuse herself from two Tesla lawsuits. The LinkedIn post that McCormick allegedly responded to with an emoji touted a court verdict that could cost Musk upwards of $2 billion for defrauding Twitter investors.  

McCormick said in a letter to Musk’s attorneys last week that she didn’t intend to click any emoji expressing support for the post, and that she had reported possible “suspicious activity” on her account to LinkedIn.

In her order on Monday, McCormick denied the motion for recusal, but said she was reassigning three Musk-related actions now before the Court of Chancery to other judges.

“The motion for recusal rests on a false premise — that I support a LinkedIn post about Mr. Musk, which I do not in fact support,” she wrote. “I am not biased against the defendants in these actions. In fact, I dismissed a suit against Mr. Musk just last year. The motion for recusal is denied. But the motion for reassignment is granted.”

McCormick became the target of Musk’s ire after she ordered Tesla to rescind his 2018 CEO pay package, worth about $56 billion in options, when she presided over the shareholder suit Tornetta v. Musk.

Musk moved his businesses, including Tesla, out of Delaware, incorporating them in Texas and Nevada and encouraging others to do the same.

In 2025, Delaware’s Supreme Court said Musk’s 2018 pay package must be restored, deciding that the lower court’s decision by McCormick was too extreme a remedy and did not give Tesla a chance to say what a fair compensation for Musk ought to be.

McCormick wrote in her order on Monday that “disproportionate media attention surrounding a judge’s handling of an action is detrimental to the administration of justice.” She said she has “complete faith” in her colleagues’ abilities to adjudicate the cases.

Tesla and Musk still have two cases proceeding through Delaware court. One concerns Tesla directors’ compensation, and the other is a consolidated shareholder suit filed by investors alleging that Musk breached his fiduciary duties to Tesla when he started a potential competitor in artificial intelligence, xAI.

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