Source: Delaware judge reassigns Elon Musk cases after LinkedIn row Publisher: Financial Times | Author: Sujeet Indap Published: March 30, 2026 | Archived: March 30, 2026

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Elon Musk’s legal battles in Delaware will be handed to new judges after the state’s top corporate jurist moved to reassign three cases amid a row over impartiality.
The move follows a request by Musk’s lawyers that Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick step aside after her LinkedIn account appeared to “like” a post celebrating a recent loss for the billionaire. She has rejected the suggestion of bias, saying she had neither seen nor endorsed the post.

In a Monday letter to lawyers involved in the Musk cases in Delaware she wrote that “\[t\]he motion for recusal rests on a false premise — that I support a LinkedIn post about Mr. Musk, which I do not in fact support. I am not biased against the defendants in these actions. In fact, I dismissed a suit against Mr. Musk just last year.”

But while she stopped short of a formal recusal, she said “disproportionate media attention surrounding a judge’s handling of an action is detrimental to the administration of justice”.

The Musk cases will instead be reassigned to three other Delaware judges, known as vice-chancellors.

One of the cases to be reassigned is the remnants of a shareholder lawsuit that challenged a $56bn pay package for Musk. McCormick in two separate rulings cancelled the award, citing a Tesla board that was too close with Musk. In December, the Delaware Supreme Court reversed the cancellation of the shares.

A second case is a fee dispute among lawyers in a case brought by a Detroit municipal pension over excessive pay for Tesla directors that was eventually settled for more than $900mn.

The third case involves an individual Tesla shareholder seeking books and records of the EV company over Musk’s 2018 tweets about a possible go-private transaction that were the subject of federal securities litigation.

Musk has regularly complained about Delaware courts and McCormick after his trial losses in the pay case.

McCormick had also overseen the case in 2022 brought by Twitter to force Musk to close the $44bn buyout after the richest man in the world had threatened to walk away. Musk decided to close that transaction at the agreed-upon price just before a trial was to begin.

Musk has since moved Tesla’s incorporation to Texas.