Check out the story on how the Plaintiffs Lawyer was able to make Elon Musk make incriminating statements at the trial (todays WSJ): "At the pivotal moment in the case that cost Elon Musk his $55 billion Tesla pay package, the lawyer cross-examining him let him go on and on and on.
"He was trying to assert control over the courtroom. He was asked a yes or no question, and instead of answering the yes or no question he began a long answer," said Greg Varallo, the plaintiff's lawyer in the Delaware courtroom. "And I remember the ordinary move there is to interrupt him, demand a yes or no answer and ask the court to instruct him to answer the question."
"And I just had an intuition to leave him alone. The more he spoke the more irrelevant what was coming out of his mouth was," he said. "He was embarrassed."
In Varallo, Musk ran up against a massive plaintiff's lawyers operation. Varallo is head of Bernstein, Litowitz, Berger & Grossmann in Delaware, and, unusually for a plaintiff's attorney, he spent decades on the other side, representing big companies like Goldman Sachs and 21st Century Fox.
The bombshell decision , issued this past week in the Delaware Court of Chancery, came more than five years after a Tesla shareholder originally filed suit, asking the state's business-law court to cancel Musk's pay package at the electric-car maker. Musk argued it was OK because he didn't dictate terms of his plan.
The many lawyers on the case, from multiple firms, represented a single shareholder plaintiff, Richard Tornetta. Lawyers wouldn't say how they connected with Tornetta. Tornetta drummed in the mid-2000s in a heavy-metal band called Dawn of Correction, which described itself as "loud aggressive rock 'n' roll with a foundation of old metal roots." Lawyers were attracted to the case because of Musk's outsize pay package.
The day he was set to cross-examine Musk was Varallo's 36th wedding anniversary so he invited his wife to come watch. The courtroom in the trial, decided by a judge without a jury, was filled with lawyers and reporters, who also filled an overflow room. His wife found a seat in the jury box.
"She took notes, when we had a break in the cross she came over with her notes and made some really interesting points from her point of view," said Varallo, 64. She used a legal pad and advised what series of questions seemed to work best and how Musk reacted to a certain line of inquiry. She suggested pressing harder on other points. "I was able to incorporate those comments for the rest of the cross. It was really special for me to be able to have her there and have her participate in the cross and, of course, it was a special day for both of us."
