‘Waste of this court’s time’

Lawyers representing billionaire Elon Musk and Tesla asked a United States district court judge to toss out a motion to have them sanctioned over alleged conflicts of interest in a $258 billion lawsuit alleging Musk participated in an illegal racketeering scheme related to the Dogecoin (DOGE) cryptocurrency.

In a filing dated July 6, Musk and Tesla’s team responded to the June 25 motion filed by Evan Spencer, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the case against Musk.

Spencer referred to the defendants’ lawyers as “yes men” in his filing and asked the judge to declare it a conflict of interest for the team to represent both Musk and Tesla. “Defense counsel is acting in this case as concurrent representatives of both Defendants,” reads the complaint, “while their real loyalty is to Elon Musk alone.”

Related: Elon Musk accuses Mark Zuckerberg of cheating: Twitter vs. Threads

The legal team representing Musk and Tesla minced no words in its response, referring to Spencer’s motion as “unsubstantiated” and “frivolous” three times in the table of contents alone.

According to the defendants’ representatives, there is no conflict of interest under New York law. They claim that the law provides for legal teams to represent the officers of companies they also represent, except in situations where the two entities are legal adversaries. Per the July 6 filing:

“Spencer’s Motion […] is an egregious abuse of process, yet another fanciful work of fiction by Spencer in a long chain of such pleadings, a waste of this Court’s time, and an insult to undersigned counsel, well-regarded members of the Bar of this Court and recently admitted by the Court pro hac vice.”

The filing goes on to address allegations made by Spencer that Tesla’s legal team leaked a letter to the New York Post purportedly disparaging Spencer’s frivolity with Rule 11. Essentially, the letter accused Spencer of having a history of filing frivolous motions to delay court procedures.

Spencer’s filing for a motion to have the defense team sanctioned claims that this action polluted the jury pool.

Musk’s and Tesla’s lawyers dispute the allegation that they leaked the letter and, in their filing, counter with the contention that it was Spencer who introduced the letter to the jury pool by publicly docketing and introducing it to the jury through the June 25 motion.