Giuseppe Pampena v. Elon R.Musk
- Charles Breyer
- 3:22-cv-05937
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 11
Pampena v. Musk: Chief Magistrate Judge Ryu granted in part and denied in part two discovery motions about requests for admission.
Giuseppe Pampena and the other plaintiffs, and Elon Musk, because the order requires some discovery responses and requires the parties to revise or clarify other requests for admission.
What happened
In Giuseppe Pampena, et al. v. Elon Musk, the plaintiffs and Musk disputed requests asking each side to admit certain facts or positions in a securities class action about Twitter’s acquisition.
The court required responses to some requests about the merger agreement, Twitter’s content moderation, price renegotiation, and spam-account calculations. It denied other requests and ordered the parties to meet and confer about unclear or revised requests.
Chief Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu granted in part and denied in part both motions to compel, with response and amendment deadlines in July 2025.
The detailed version
- Giuseppe Pampena v. Elon R.Musk · No. 3:22-cv-05937
- Charles Breyer
- June 30, 2025
Background
This is a securities class action. The plaintiffs allege that Twitter and an entity wholly owned by Elon Musk agreed to Twitter’s acquisition for $54.20 per share, and that Musk later made misrepresentations to depress Twitter’s stock price and pressure Twitter to lower the acquisition price.
The parties filed competing discovery motions about requests for admission under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 36. Musk moved to compel further responses to 24 requests. The plaintiffs moved to compel further responses to seven requests. The court decided the matter without oral argument.
Musk’s Requests
The court granted Musk’s motion to compel responses to Requests for Admission 35–38, 45–46, and 49–50. Those requests asked whether the merger agreement was ambiguous regarding Musk’s rights, based on the plaintiffs’ own understanding of the agreement. The plaintiffs could add good-faith qualifications, but they first had to answer the requests as written.
The court denied Musk’s motion to compel responses to Requests for Admission 230–231, 234–235, 238–239, and 242–245. Those requests sought the plaintiffs’ admissions about competing interpretations of the merger agreement, including what the agreement required Twitter or Musk to do. The court found that these disputed issues were central to the plaintiffs’ securities-fraud theory and should not be resolved through requests for admission.
For Requests for Admission 61–64, which used the term “decipherable,” the court ordered the parties to meet and confer about the meaning of the term or alternative wording. The court also denied Musk’s motion to compel responses to Requests for Admission 221–222 about whether SparkToro published a particular blog post on May 15, 2022. The court found that the link in the requests was broken and that access to an archived third-party article did not necessarily place the plaintiffs in a position to verify its publication date.
Plaintiffs’ Requests
The court granted the plaintiffs’ motion to compel a response to Request for Admission 229. That request concerned whether Musk personally made content-moderation decisions on Twitter after October 26, 2022. The court found the information relevant and discoverable because it could relate to Musk’s possible testimony about his motives for buying Twitter and his state of mind during later efforts to back out of or renegotiate the purchase.
The court also granted the plaintiffs’ motion to compel responses to Requests for Admission 383–384, concerning whether Musk publicly said he wanted to renegotiate the deal price or pay less than $54.20 per share. The court found those requests relevant to the plaintiffs’ theory that Musk made other misrepresentations as part of a secret effort to pressure Twitter to lower the price.
The court granted the plaintiffs’ motion to compel responses to Requests for Admission 385–386, concerning whether Twitter had provided Musk or his advisers with an explanation of its spam-account methodology and some requested data by June 25, 2022. Musk could admit only part of a request or add a qualification, but he had to answer the requests as written.
For Requests for Admission 388–389, concerning an advice-of-counsel defense and the use of counsel-related evidence, the court found the wording ambiguous. It ordered the parties to meet and confer, required the plaintiffs to amend the requests, and required Musk to answer the amended requests.
Disposition
The court granted in part and denied in part the parties’ discovery motions. The plaintiffs had to respond to Musk’s Requests for Admission 35–38, 45–46, and 49–50 by July 21,
- The parties had to meet and confer about Requests for Admission 61–64, with amended requests due July 21 and responses due July
- Musk had to respond to the plaintiffs’ Requests for Admission 229 and 383–386 by July
- The plaintiffs had to serve amended Requests for Admission 388–389 by July 21, and Musk had to answer them by July 28.
Read the full 11-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.