COURTING FAME

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

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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.