I suspect that Musk's team will use the threat of that in order to try to deter further action from Unsworth.
This is also a warning shot to deter other "nuisance lawsuits": Elon is playing hardball and won't settle just to avoid embarrassment and litigation expenses. The mini-submarine was an act of kindness, and Unsworth turned it into a negative narrative by successfully trolling Elon on TV. No way would Elon settle with him, and the $190m figure made it clear that it was only about the money for Unsworth.
Ahahaha, Unsworth is going to regret it when he sees how much Elon's lawyer charges. Is Ars Technica melting down yet? They love Elon so much over there...
From Twitter: Here’s Vernon Unsworth leaving court. He says he’ll respect the jury verdict and “take it on the chin.” The End
Maybe just because they have to prove harm to the person or entity who is the subject of the statements and nobody believed Unsworth was harmed by Musk's ironically butthurt response to Unsworth's comment, so they used the South African idiom line as an excuse to call no damages.
I doubt Musk is going to sue for costs. He'll just be happy that he got a verdict of Butthurt and can get back to work. Suing would just make him look like a total dick.
According to Ryan Mac, he interviewed a juror (who happened to also be an attorney and Tesla owner). The case failed immediately on one of the five points, so they didn't even get into the debatable points. That point was "acquiantance". That is: if a person read Musk's tweet, would they understand, without having to do additional research, who he was talking about? The answer was no, so that point failed, and thus there was no point in debating the case further.
This whole thing tarnished my image of Elon forever. Billionaire calling someone a pedophile with no evidence, pretty much the worst type of accusation you can make about someone. Then gloats about getting away with it... I guess we're used to Billionaires crapping on little people and smiling about it these days. Too bad Elon has joined camp. He's a visionary... and a jerk. Can't have much respect for the Tesla sycophants defending such behavior either.
Glad it's over, but not sure why he ever made that comment. Unforced error that caused him a lot of trouble for no gain. People like Elon need to maintain excellent discipline to avoid the sharks, and he slipped up on that one.
Unsworth saves kids. Elon saves his ego. Yay Elon! At the very least, Unsworth hopefully cleared his name from such a horrible accusation. Elon dared him to sue him because he thought evidence would come out supporting his pedo claim. That didn't happen. Elon could afford great lawyers. OJ as well.
a tweet throwing an insult is totally the same as OJ... lol P.S. None of us are defending Elon's behavior, but your anger prevents you from seeing that. We just realize that this is stuff from 2018 and Elon has shown his remorse for it. We allow people to move on from their past mistakes.
Unsworth saved no one directly. He provided a map of the cave which was very helpful, but that’s still a far cry from actually saving someone.