Lawyers for American entrepreneur Elon Musk have asked a US court to reject a fraud lawsuit filed against the billionaire by the British cave explorer who participated in an operation to save children from a cave in Thailand, BuzzFeed reports quoting documents published on 27 December in the electronic database of the court in the Central District of California.
"Shocked by Unsworth's indefensible and baseless attacks, Musk answered to defend himself and the efforts of SpaceX, Tesla, and the Boring Company employees who had given up their days and nights to help find a solution. Musk took to Twitter — a social networking website infamous for invective and hyperbole — to respond", the motion sent to court says.
"Musk, unaware even of Unsworth's name, tweeted that he had never met the 'dude' from CNN, but was nonetheless determined to prove him wrong. He vowed to demonstrate that his submarine could navigate the caves 'no problemo'", the motion continues.
According to the defence, "Musk's statements were thus necessarily just imaginative attacks; even if offensive, such speculative insults are by their nature opinion and protected by the First Amendment", and cannot be subject to defamation laws, the documents state.
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The 12 young footballers from the Wild Boars club and their coach were trapped underground for more than two weeks before being rescued on July 8-10 following a unique three-day international search and rescue operation.