Elon Musk is locked in a heated trial in a lawsuit he lodged against his rival OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman.
Or at least, he’s supposed to be. Despite the judge’s explicit order that he be ready to testify in court again, the world’s richest man has eloped to China with president Donald Trump on an official diplomatic visit, leaving his lawyers flailing.
Today, each side gave their closing arguments. Steven Molo, Musk’s lead counsel, began by apologizing on his client’s behalf. “He’s sorry he could not be here,” Molo said, according to The Verge‘s courtroom reporting.
Molo then extolled the importance of jury duty, “which is never a good sign in a closing statement,” as the site’s Elizabeth Lopatto quipped.
Both Musk and Altman have taken the witness stand during the trial. Because he might be expected to testify again, US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers told Musk that he would be held in “recall status,” meaning he should be available to take the stand again if asked to.
According to an NBC News scoop citing sources familiar with the matter, Musk never obtained permission from the judge to leave, and was still under recall status. Technically, Musk wasn’t instructed not to travel, but he’s still playing with fire, according to Jeffrey Bellin, a law professor at Vanderbilt University. There’s no hard-and-fast rule on how physically close a witness should be under recall status, and these restrictions are up to a judge. But the situation is still unusual, Bellin told NBC.
“A typical witness would not leave the country if they were subject to recall,” he added. “If I were the attorney, I would have made sure that if my witness is subject to recall and he’s left the country, that the judge is OK with that.”
Why Musk decided to bail is unclear. Maybe he couldn’t pass up an opportunity to reassert himself in China, a country where he’s long had important business relationships and has many admirers, but where in recent years his automaker has fallen behind domestic competitors.
His disappearing act also comes as the court battle has swung against him. On the witness stand he was testy and combative, calling the questioning “definitionally complex” while completely failing to maintain a confident face.
He contradicted his previous claim that Tesla was building AGI, fibbed about the amount of money he gave OpenAI, proudly admitted that he “didn’t read the fine print” on a term sheet Altman shared about restructuring OpenAI into for-profit controlled by a non-profit, and stumbled when he had to explain that former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis, once Musk’s chief of staff, was also the mother of some of his children. The judge even had to order Musk to stop tweeting about the trial, which he surprisingly abided.
Legal snubs aren’t a first for Musk. Earlier this year, he blew off a summons from French prosecutors for a voluntary interview as part of an investigation into his AI chatbot’s Grok digital undressing of minors.
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