COURTING FAME

How Alex Spiro became the trial lawyer celebrities want on their side

In the summer of 2018, four years before he bought Twitter, the entrepreneur Elon Musk was facing legal consequences for two of his more reckless forays on the social-media platform. A boys’ soccer team in Thailand had been trapped in a flooded cave for more than two weeks, and a caver involved in the rescue said on CNN that a bespoke submarine Musk had sent to save the children was a “PR stunt.” Infuriated, Musk told his twenty-two million Twitter followers, without basis in fact, that the caver, Vernon Unsworth, was a “pedo guy.” The tweet went viral, and Unsworth’s attorney threatened to sue Musk for defamation.

Soon afterward, Musk tweeted about Tesla, the electric-car company that he runs: “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.” To many people, the message suggested that Musk had arranged a buyout of the company; Tesla’s stock price rose almost eleven per cent by the end of the day. A week later, however, the Times reported that the potential backer, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, had never agreed to a deal. The stock price dropped, investors claimed that they had lost money as a result, and the Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating Musk for securities fraud.