A Delaware judge who has overseen shareholder lawsuits against Elon Musk is removing herself from cases involving the Tesla CEO after his lawyers accused her of bias.
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Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, the top judge in Delaware Chancery Court, said in a Monday court filing that she would reassign three lawsuits involving Musk to different judges.
The move follows a motion from Musk’s lawyers last week to remove McCormick from a set of Tesla shareholder lawsuits. They said McCormick and one of her employees reacted positively on LinkedIn to posts that were critical of Musk.
In her filing Monday, McCormick maintained that she did not use the heart emoji-bearing “support” reaction to any LinkedIn posts about Musk.
“The motion for recusal rests on a false premise — that I support a LinkedIn post about Mr. Musk, which I do not in fact support,” McCormick wrote. “I am not biased against the defendants in these actions. In fact, I dismissed a suit against Mr. Musk just last year.”
While McCormick declined to recuse herself from the lawsuits involving Musk, she chose to reassign the cases to different judges — called vice chancellors, in the parlance of Delaware Chancery Court — anyway.
She said the “disproportionate media attention” surrounding her handling of the case would be “detrimental to the administration of justice.”
“Fortunately, the Court of Chancery is far greater than any one person,” McCormick wrote. “I have complete faith in the Vice Chancellors’ abilities to adjudicate these matters.”
Musk’s lawyers said in their Tuesday night filing that McCormick had used the “support” emoji on LinkedIn on a post that celebrated his loss in a separate California case. It also said a member of her staff “liked” another LinkedIn post critical of Musk.
Musk’s lawyers said Delaware Chancellor Kate McCormick went beyond “liking” a LinkedIn post criticizing Elon Musk.
Delaware Court of Chancery
In her own court filing last week, McCormick said she didn’t remember even seeing the post and that she “reported the suspicious activity to LinkedIn.”
“LinkedIn recently reported that I hit the heart-in-hand icon intended to show a sign of ‘support’ concerning a LinkedIn post about Mr. Musk,” McCormick wrote last week. “I do not ‘support’ the post.”
McCormick is no stranger to tangoing with Musk. In 2024, she sided with shareholders in a ruling that struck down a $55 billion pay package for Musk serving as Tesla’s CEO. (Her ruling was later overturned.) She also oversaw Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk seeking to force him to follow through on his promise to buy the social media company, which has since been renamed to X Corp.
McCormick is now removing herself from three shareholder lawsuits against Musk. Two accuse him of taking actions that benefited himself rather than shareholders, and a third alleges that Tesla’s board allowed him to take actions that may have run afoul of an SEC settlement. Musk has denied wrongdoing in the cases.
