Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick announced Monday that she is reassigning cases involving Elon Musk to other judges following accusations of bias from the Tesla CEO’s legal team.
CNBC reports that the decision comes after Musk’s attorneys formally demanded last week that McCormick recuse herself from two Tesla lawsuits, claiming she harbored prejudice against the world’s richest person. The controversy stemmed from allegations that McCormick had responded with a supportive emoji to a LinkedIn post that was critical of Musk.
The LinkedIn post in question highlighted a court verdict that could potentially cost Musk more than $2 billion for defrauding Twitter investors. McCormick responded to the recusal demand in a letter to Musk’s attorneys, stating that she had not intended 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 issued Monday, McCormick formally denied the motion for her recusal while simultaneously granting the motion for reassignment. “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’s decision to step aside from three Musk-related actions currently before the Court of Chancery marks a significant development in the ongoing legal battles between the judge and the tech billionaire. The reassignment will place these cases in the hands of McCormick’s judicial colleagues.
The friction between McCormick and Musk originated from her 2024 ruling in the shareholder lawsuit Tornetta v. Musk, in which she ordered Tesla to rescind Musk’s 2018 CEO compensation package valued at approximately $56 billion in stock options. Following that decision, Musk relocated his businesses, including Tesla, from Delaware to Texas and Nevada, and publicly encouraged other companies to follow suit.
In 2025, Delaware’s Supreme Court overturned McCormick’s ruling on the pay package, determining that the lower court’s decision represented too extreme a remedy and failed to give Tesla an opportunity to propose what would constitute fair compensation for Musk.
McCormick addressed the media attention surrounding her handling of Musk-related cases in her Monday order, writing that “disproportionate media attention surrounding a judge’s handling of an action is detrimental to the administration of justice.” She expressed “complete faith” in her colleagues’ abilities to properly adjudicate the reassigned cases.
Despite McCormick’s departure from these matters, Tesla and Musk continue to face two active cases in Delaware court. The first involves compensation for Tesla directors, while the second is a consolidated shareholder lawsuit alleging that Musk breached his fiduciary duties to Tesla by establishing xAI, a potential competitor in the artificial intelligence sector.
Read more at CNBC here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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