Elon Musk’s X Corp. scored a legal victory on Thursday as a Texas judge denied the Motion to Dismiss filed by Media Matters in the social media platform’s defamation suit.
Because of U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor’s decision on Thursday, X’s lawsuit against the nonprofit media watchdog and two of its staff members will proceed to trial on April 7.
X, formerly known as Twitter, originally filed the suit in November after Media Matters published a report showing that hateful content on the platform appeared next to online ads from companies like Apple, IBM and Disney. Those companies then paused their X advertising campaigns, the suit said.
Attorneys representing X claimed the Media Matters report was “intentionally deceptive” and financially damaged the company.
In the 16-page Order, which may be viewed in full below, Judge Reed O’Connor first laid out his determination that the court held proper personal jurisdiction over the defendants and why venue was proper in the Northern District of Texas before turning to the question of whether X Corp. properly stated a claim. In noting that it had, as to the claim for tortious interference with a contract, O’Connor stated:
Plaintiff has provided sufficient allegations to survive dismissal. Plaintiff has factually alleged: the existence of contracts subject to interference; intentional acts of interference; and proximate causation. It cannot reasonably be disputed that Plaintiff has named parties who contracted for paid ads on X. Media Matters’ reporting has acknowledged as much. Plaintiff has therefore pled facts supporting this element.
Further, as to the claim for business disparagement, O’Connor said:
First, construing the facts pled by Plaintiff in the light most favorable to it, that Defendants manipulated and intended to deceive Plaintiff’s advertisers is sufficient to support the first element. Plaintiff alleges Defendants acted with malice and without privilege by asserting Defendants’ reporting was false and the “frequency and tenor of Media Matters’ statements disparaging X and the safety of advertising on the X platform” supports an inference of actual malice. And finally, Plaintiff has pled a plausible claim regarding special damages in that Defendants tortious acts undermined “advertisers’ faith in X Corp.’s abilities to monitor and curate content.”
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It should be noted that the court has not found that X Corp.’s allegations are true or supported by the evidence — merely that they have sufficiently pleaded the claims so as to get past the motion to dismiss. The case will now proceed with discovery and currently is set to go to trial on April 7, 2025.
For his part, Musk seems rather happy about the news.
LFG!! https://t.co/FRDdOfvbYn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 30, 2024
X – Media Matters – Order – 8-29-24 by Susie Moore on Scribd
