A New York judge has urged the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Tesla CEO Elon Musk to settle a dispute over how much he can tell in his tweets.
U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan concluded a contempt-of-court hearing Thursday by telling both sides to meet in the next two weeks.
If they can't resolve their differences, she'll rule.
The SEC says Musk violated a deal when he tweeted about Tesla's vehicle production in February without a lawyer's approval. His lawyer says he did not.
With Musk observing from a defense table, lawyers argued for nearly two hours before Nathan urged a settlement. She called contempt-of-court "serious business" and told both sides to "take a deep breath."
She said court-supervised deals must be obeyed, though.
On February 19th, Musk tweeted that "Tesla made zero cars in 2011, but will make around 500,000 in 2019."Â
Hours later, he posted a follow-up tweet indicating that the company will actually deliver just 400,000 cars this year.
According to court papers, regulators said he had "once again published inaccurate and material information about Tesla to his over 24 million Twitter followers."Â
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