LOS ANGELES: Tweets made by Elon Musk calling a British cave rescuer a “pedo guy” can’t simply be dismissed as mere opinion, says Vernon Unsworth, the caver who is suing the Tesla chief executive for defamation.
Unsworth made the comment in a request filed with the US district court in Los Angeles on Friday to deny Musk’s attempt to have the lawsuit dismissed.
Musk can’t escape liability by arguing that his tweets are just his opinion, simply because Tesla has said in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing that Musk’s Twitter account is “a medium to communicate facts”, Unsworth said.
And if they are meant as factual statements, Musk can be sued for defamation, said Unsworth, one of the key participants in the dramatic rescue of the Wild Boars football team from the Tham Luang cave in Chiang Rai last July.
A hearing in the case is scheduled for April 1.
Musk’s lawyers said in an earlier filing that their client’s comments about Unsworth were free speech protected by the first amendment of the US constitution, even if they lacked any factual basis.
They said Musk’s “over-the-top” comments came amid a “schoolyard spat on social media”, where participants “expect to read opinions, not facts”, and that no one could have reasonably believed they were truthful.
Unsworth disagrees.
“Musk asks this court to openly sanction one-sided Twitter warfare, where no one is safe because nobody can be held accountable and all reputations are at grave risk,” he said. “Lest the floodgates open, the court must deny Musk’s motion to dismiss.”
Musk on July last year called Unsworth a “pedo guy” in a tweet to more than 22 million Twitter followers, a comment for which he later apologised. He also urged a BuzzFeed News reporter in an Aug 30 email to investigate Unsworth and “stop defending child rapists”.
Unsworth has denied those allegations.
He said he became a target after rescue divers declined to use a mini-submarine offered by Musk’s SpaceX rocket company. Unsworth told CNN the offer was a “PR stunt” and the device would not have worked.