By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Michael Cohen, the onetime personal lawyer and fixer for Donald Trump, can sue the Trump Organization to cover millions of dollars in legal fees from defending against investigations into his work for the former U.S. president, a New York state appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

Cohen, now a vocal Trump critic, said the real estate company stopped paying his bills after he began cooperating with several investigations. Among these were probes into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Trump’s efforts to silence women who claimed they had affairs with him.

In a 5-0 decision, the Appellate Division in Manhattan said a trial judge erred in dismissing Cohen’s lawsuit. The court said it was unclear whether Cohen’s legal fees mounted because he had been a Trump Organization employee, which would entitle him to reimbursement.

Justice Joel Cohen, the trial judge, had ruled last November that Cohen’s fees “arise out of his (sometimes unlawful) service to Mr. Trump personally, to Mr. Trump’s campaign and to the Trump Foundation, but not out of his service to the business of the Trump Organization, which is the only defendant.”

Michael Cohen originally sued in March 2019 to recoup $1.9 million in fees, plus $1.9 million he was ordered to forfeit in a criminal case. The fees kept growing, and the Trump Organization has paid some of them, court papers show.

Lawyers for the company and Cohen did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Michael Cohen and Justice Cohen are not related.

Cohen served a three-year sentence, partially in home confinement because of the COVID-19 pandemic, after pleading guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations and tax evasion.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan dismissed Cohen’s lawsuit accusing Trump and the government of returning him to prison from home confinement for 16 days in July 2020, in retaliation for publicizing his tell-all book. The book, “Disloyal: A Memoir,” became a New York Times bestseller.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Allen Weisselberg, a longtime senior executive at former U.S. President Donald Trump’s family business, took the stand on Tuesday as the prosecution’s star witness at the Trump Organization’s tax fraud trial in New York state court.

Weisselberg, 75, pleaded guilty in August to avoiding taxes on $1.76 million in personal income and helping Trump’s real estate company engineer a 15-year tax fraud scheme. His plea was part of a deal with prosecutors to testify at the trial in exchange for a five-month jail sentence.

The company has pleaded not guilty. Its lawyers argue that Weisselberg – who worked for Trump for half a century, and is currently on paid leave – orchestrated the scheme to benefit only himself.

Trump, a Republican, has not personally been charged with a crime, but has called the prosecution politically motivated. Both Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his predecessor who began the investigation, Cyrus Vance, are Democrats.

The case is one of several legal troubles facing the 76-year-old Trump as he is set to announce another bid for the presidency after losing in 2020.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld and Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Josie Kao)

Queen Elizabeth didn’t like her hands, according to royal photographer Rankin.

The 56-year-old celebrity photographer – who has photographed the likes of David Bowie, Kate Moss and Madonna, to name a few – revealed the late monarch’s insecurity and how she used it as a “get out” when he tried to get an image of her holding a sword for the Golden Jubilee in 2002.

Speaking on the ‘Tea With Twiggy’ podcast, he spilled: “I was like, ‘I really want to photograph you holding the sword,’ and she said, ‘I don’t like my hands.’ [I thought] that’s the best ‘get out’ for holding the sword.

“I’m probably not supposed to say that [she disliked her hands], but what I loved about her is she’s so smart and everything in response that she was saying had this amazing twist to it.”

Rankin – whose real name is John Rankin Waddell – said his brief time with the royal was “really, really brilliant”.

He told former supermodel Twiggy: “It was just really, really brilliant. I loved it — I spent five minutes with her, so I don’t know her intimately.”

Rankin shared how when Elizabeth – who was 96 when she died peacefully of old age on September 8 – entered the room “this wave of empowerment washes over you.”

He said: “I’ve never felt that aura and she was just so funny from the minute she walked in.

The photographer insisted he has proof his image of the late sovereign was regarded as one of Buckingham Palace’s “favourites”.

He said: “I got a really amazing note where the curator said my photograph of her is one of their favourites – which I think means the Palace’s favourite – because she’s really laughing in my picture.”

New York (AFP) – Beyonce leads this year’s pack of Grammy Award nominees with nine chances at gold on music’s biggest night, ahead of rapper Kendrick Lamar coming in at eight, and balladeers Adele and Brandi Carlile scoring seven each.

That sets the stage for a fresh showdown at the February gala between Beyonce and Adele, after the British artist shut out the pop queen’s “Lemonade,” which wowed critics and fans — in the major categories in 2017. 

The nominations, announced on Tuesday, also saw Beyonce move into a tie with her husband, Jay-Z, as the most nominated artists ever with 88 each.

The 65th annual Grammys are slated to take place in Los Angeles on February 5, at what looks set to be the Recording Academy’s most star-studded gala in recent memory.

R&B legend Mary J. Blige won six chances at a prize off her album “Good Morning Gorgeous” — she was tied with rapper Future and DJ Khaled for his album “God Did.”

Pop juggernaut Harry Styles, who has been snubbed in past years by the Academy, will also vie for six awards, including alongside Beyonce, Lamar and Adele for Record and Album of the Year.

Queen Bey’s dance and disco-inflected album “Renaissance” was a boon for songwriters including Terius “The-Dream” Gesteelde-Diamant, who thanks to his work on “Renaissance” also was nominated in six categories.

Recent Grammy regulars Lizzo and Doja Cat also figure among the top nominees.

Taylor Swift, who’s been making good on a vow to re-record her first six albums so she can control the rights to them, garnered recognition in the country categories along with a nod for best music video and another in the prestigious Song of the Year contest for her 10-minute version of “All Too Well.”

And Bad Bunny, indisputably the world’s biggest streaming and touring artist, came away with three nominations for his major drop “Un Verano Sin Ti,” which is in the running for best album.

OG stars make Grammy splash

The Academy — made up of music-makers including artists, composers and engineers — also honored a coterie of music’s enduring stars including Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson and ABBA with a significant collection of nominations each.

Grammy regulars in the global categories including Angelique Kidjo and Burna Boy also made appearances, while South Korea’s boy band sensation BTS — who earlier this year declared they were taking a hiatus — while vie once again for their first elusive gramophone.

And it wouldn’t be the Grammys without a few surprises: icon Neil Young will compete against stars including Adele, Billie Eilish and Justin Bieber for the award for Best Music Film.

By Jeffrey Dastin

(Reuters) -Amazon.com Inc is planning to lay off around 10,000 employees in corporate and technology roles beginning this week, a person familiar with the matter said on Monday, in what would amount to its biggest such reduction to date.

The cuts, earlier reported by the New York Times, would represent about 3% of Amazon’s corporate staff. The exact number may vary as businesses within Amazon review their priorities, the source told Reuters.

The online retailer plans to eliminate jobs in its devices organization, which makes voice-controlled “Alexa” gadgets and home-security cameras, as well as in its human-resources and retail divisions, the person said. Amazon’s time frame for informing staff remained unclear.

The source attributed the reduction to the uncertain macroeconomic environment faced by Amazon and other companies.

The news follows a wave of layoffs across the technology sector, which is wary of recession after years of rapid hiring. Just last week, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc said it would cut more than 11,000 jobs, or 13% of its workforce, to rein in costs.

Seattle-based Amazon is predicting a slowdown in sales growth for the typically lucrative holiday season.

On a call with reporters last month, Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said the company saw signs of tighter household budgets for shopping, and it continued to wrestle with high inflation and energy costs.

It since has said it would freeze incremental corporate hiring for several months.

Amazon’s devices unit in some recent years has posted an annual operating loss of more than $5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. The company has weighed whether to focus on new capabilities for Alexa when some customers use the voice assistant for just a few tasks, the report said.

Company-wide, taking warehouse and transportation jobs into account, which made Amazon’s headcount more than 1.5 million as of Sept. 30, the planned cuts amounted to less than 1% of the retailer’s workforce.

Shares of Amazon have lost more than 40% of their value this year. They were down 1.1% at $99.67 on Monday afternoon.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in Palo Alto, Calif., and Tiyashi Datta and Nivedita Balu in BengaluruEditing by Arun Koyyur and Matthew Lewis)

By Mike Scarcella

(Reuters) – Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday asked a U.S. appeals court to revive his lawsuit against Twitter Inc challenging his permanent suspension from the platform after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Lawyers for Trump, a Republican, told the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a filing that the ban from Twitter marked “overtly partisan censorship” and was “contrary to First Amendment principles deeply rooted in American history and law.”

His lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages and a court order requiring Twitter to “immediately reinstate” his account that was permanently suspended on Jan. 8, 2021.

Trump has vowed to keep posting to his own Truth Social media platform. Twitter’s new owner, billionaire Elon Musk, has said that he would reinstate Trump’s account.

A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment, and a Twitter spokesperson did not immediately reply.

A lawyer for Trump, John Coale in Washington, told Reuters on Monday, “We want him to have the right to get back on” to Twitter.

Twitter said last year it had permanently suspended Trump’s account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as it was preparing to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential win.

San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge James Donato in May dismissed Trump’s claim that his ban from Twitter violated speech protections accorded under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

Donato also denied Trump’s claim that Twitter was serving as a “state actor” when it banned his account.

(Reporting by Mike Scarcella in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

By Akriti Sharma and Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) – Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes should spend 15 years in prison and pay $800 million in restitution to investors defrauded in the blood testing start-up, U.S. prosecutors recommended late on Friday.

The Department of Justice recommendation, made in a court filing, came as Holmes prepares to be sentenced next week.

“Considering the extensiveness of Holmes’ fraud… the sentencing of 180 months’ imprisonment would reflect the seriousness of the offenses, provide for just punishment for the offenses, and deter Holmes and others,” the prosecutors said.

Holmes earlier urged U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California not to send her to prison.

A jury convicted the 38-year-old on four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy in January. Each count carries a maximum 20-year prison term. Any sentence would likely be served concurrently.

Prosecutors said she lied to investors from 2010 to 2015 by promising Theranos Inc’s technology could run many tests on one drop of blood from a finger prick.

Holmes had pleaded not guilty to charges that she lied about Theranos, including that its technology could detect diseases with a few drops of blood, and said the firm’s lab directors were in charge of test quality.

On Monday, Davila rejected her requests for a new trial, including over a claim that a key prosecution witness visited her at home and made statements that undermined his testimony.

Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 at the age of 19. The company was once valued at $9 billion, and Forbes magazine estimated Holmes’ net worth at $4.5 billion in 2015.

Theranos collapsed after the Wall Street Journal published a series of articles, starting in 2015, that suggested its devices were flawed and inaccurate.

(Reporting by Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Pravin Char)

Emma D’Arcy joked they are “allergic” to having long hair.

The ‘House of Dragon’ star – whose uses they/them pronouns – does not want to rock the same hairdos their character Princess Rhaenyra sports on the HBO prequel to ‘Game of Thrones’ but has massive respect for the “art of wigging”.

The 30-year-old actor told the digital edition of GQ: “The word I used when explaining it was that I am almost ‘allergic’ to lots of hair”

“I think the art of wigging is complete magic. They are made for you, so they fit your head perfectly. The illusion is seamless. Immediately, a good wig changes your behaviour, your posture, but also, fractionally, it changes how you are read and perceived.”

Emma is not “fond” of getting dolled up in conventionally feminine ways on the red carpet either.

They said: “‘Glamour’ is not a word I’m particularly fond of… I have an awkward relationship with it.”

“In those inherently public spaces, I try to distance myself from myself. I want to be at least two steps to the left of me, because it can be very vulnerable being out there in these places as myself.”

Last month, Emma gushed about how “grateful” they were about their co-star Matt Smith, who is veteran of big budget projects like ‘The Crown’ and ‘Doctor Who’ and plays Daemon Targaryen from the George RR Martin-created world.

They said: “God, I’m so grateful to Matt. I’ve learned a lot from him. I’ve learned how to play in what can be an intense environment. He has taught me how to ignore the various pressures, the time pressures, all the things that come with shooting on this scale, and tap back into those first principles.”

Washington (AFP) – Former president Donald Trump’s inflammatory words before and during last year’s US Capitol insurrection endangered Americans including his own deputy Mike Pence, the former vice president said in a television interview set to air Monday.

“The president’s words that day at the rally (before the riot) endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol,” Pence told ABC News.

Pence reportedly is laying the groundwork for a presidential run in 2024. It would pit him against his former boss, who has convened the media to his palatial Florida home on Tuesday night reportedly to announce his own White House bid.

Pence’s interview to be broadcast on ABC’s “World News Tonight” coincides with the release Tuesday of his memoir, “So Help Me God.”

The veteran Republican told the network that Trump, speaking on January 6, 2021 at a park near the White House, incited the crowd before it marched toward the Capitol: “The president’s words were reckless. It was clear he decided to be part of the problem.”

Pence said he was “angered” when he read a Trump tweet that day asserting that the vice president “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done” to keep Trump in office by blocking Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

“I turned to my daughter, who was standing nearby, and I said, ‘It doesn’t take courage to break the law. It takes courage to uphold the law,'” Pence told the network.

The vice president was on Capitol Hill at the time, and US Secret Service officers evacuated him from the US Senate chamber where he narrowly avoided an encounter with rioters who had stormed into the complex.

Pence has largely kept mum about his interactions with Trump in the run-up to the January 6 mob attack — until this month.

In an excerpt from his memoir, published last week by the Wall Street Journal, Pence said he spoke with Trump by phone on New Year’s Day 2021 and conveyed his refusal to take part in a plan to keep Trump in power.

“‘You’re too honest,'” Pence said Trump told him. “Hundreds of thousands are gonna hate your guts…. People are gonna think you’re stupid.'”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A watchdog group on Monday asked the U.S. Federal Election Commission to probe a $20 million transfer between two groups tied to former President Donald Trump, alleging the money was illegally sponsoring Trump’s aim to return to the White House.

Trump has repeatedly hinted that he plans to run for president again in 2024 and has invited media to his Florida estate on Tuesday for what he says will be a “major announcement.”

Since leaving office in 2021, the former president has aggressively raised money for his Save America group. But under campaign finance rules he is barred from spending Save America funds on his own campaigns.

In October, Save America transferred $20 million to a Trump-aligned group called Make America Great Again Inc, which is registered with the Federal Elections Commission as an independent super PAC. The group spent more than $11 million supporting Republican candidates in the midterm elections and last reported having more than $23 million in the bank on Oct. 19.

The legal complaint filed on Monday by the Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan group, said the FEC is obliged to investigate the transfer because the money is “obviously intended to fund support for Trump’s 2024 presidential candidacy.”

An FEC spokesperson said the commission does not comment on litigation.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Scott Malone and Chizu Nomiyama)

By Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away another challenge to a federal ban imposed under former President Donald Trump on devices called “bump stocks” that enable a semi-automatic weapon to fire like a machine gun.

The justices declined to review an appeal by a group of firearms dealers and individuals in Minnesota, Texas and Kentucky after a lower court rejected their argument that the government had violated the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment “takings clause” by effectively taking their private property without just compensation.

Trump’s administration moved to reclassify bump stocks as machine guns, which are forbidden under U.S. law, in a rare firearms control measure prompted by a 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. The Supreme Court in 2019 declined to block the ban from going into effect. The justices last month rejected appeals by a Utah gun lobbyist and firearms rights groups of lower court rulings upholding the ban as a reasonable interpretation of a federal law prohibiting machine gun possession.

Bump stocks use a gun’s recoil to bump its trigger, enabling a semiautomatic weapon to fire hundreds of rounds per minute to let it shoot like a machine gun. Trump pledged to ban them after a gunman used semiautomatic weapons outfitted with bump stocks in a shooting spree that killed 58 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a U.S. Justice Department agency, reversed a previous conclusion and classified bump stocks as machine guns under a 1934 U.S. law called the National Firearms Act. The policy took effect in 2019.

Two sets of plaintiffs filed lawsuits seeking compensation for having to destroy or surrender their bump stocks in the Court of Federal Claims, which hears monetary claims against the U.S. government. A judge dismissed the actions, finding the policy to be a lawful exercise of the federal government’s power to outlaw dangers to public health and safety.

The Washington-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld those decisions last year for a different reason, ruling that a property right in the devices was inherently limited given the existing federal prohibition on machine guns.

In a nation divided over how to limit firearms violence, gun rights are becoming increasingly expansive. Legal experts have said a variety of gun control measures are at risk since the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in June recognizing for the first time a right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense under the Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms.

That ruling, powered by the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, struck down New York state limits on carrying concealed handguns outside the home.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)

By William James and Valerie Volcovici

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed on Monday to resume cooperation on climate change and other issues, offering a boost to bogged down and behind schedule negotiations at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt

The leaders of the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases met at the G20 summit on the Indonesian island of Bali where climate change will be competing for time with issues such as the global economy and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Their agreement to talk again about climate thawed relations frozen earlier this year after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi angered China by visiting Taiwan.

News of the rapprochement came just as COP27 climate negotiators at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh were looking for a sign that G20 nations were willing to stump up more cash and fresh commitments in the fight against rising global temperatures.

Teresa Ribera, Spain’s climate minister, said she was hopeful that the rapprochement would energise negotiations. “The two biggest emitters need to be cooperative and ambitious,” she told Reuters.

Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council, called it “essential”.

“This unequivocal signal from the two largest economies to work together to address the climate crisis is more than welcome; it’s essential,” Bapna said.

Heading into the last week of the two-week conference progress has been slow, frustrating negotiators who are struggling to find consensus on how rich countries should help developing nations meet the cost of climate-fuelled disasters.

The outcome on that issue, referred to in climate talks as “loss and damage”, could define the perceived success or failure of the COP27 talks.

One senior negotiator, who could not be named due to the sensitivity of the talks, said that after an opening week heavy on promises but light on new cash commitments, many developing nations were watching Bali closely for a signal that the richest economies were taking concrete actions.

Progress from the G20 group of the world’s wealthiest economies – and also its largest emissions producers – could come in the form of both cash and political signalling.

One issue some delegates and observers in Egypt were looking for progress on was the provision of climate finance to developing countries by multilateral development banks – the international financial institutions whose sovereign shareholders sit mostly within the G20.

“It’s important that they do that, and that will provide support and momentum for COP,” Avinash Persaud, special envoy on climate finance to Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, told Reuters.

The United States is expected to announce an energy transition plan with Indonesia on Tuesday which will also involve other G7 nations – essentially a funding package to help switch from coal power to clean energy.

G20 leaders may also look to agree a statement on addressing environmental concerns, providing some relief after officials in August failed to agree a joint communique, amid objections over language used on climate targets and the war in Ukraine.

(Reporting by William James and Valerie Volcovici; Additional reporting by Simon Jessop; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Alison Williams)

By Nate Raymond and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday paved the way for a congressional panel to obtain phone records from Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward, rejecting her request to block a subpoena issued in the investigation into the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack by former President Donald Trump’s supporters.

Ward, a Trump ally, had asked the Supreme Court to intervene after lower courts declined to bar telephone carrier T-Mobile from complying with the subpoena from the Democratic-led House of Representatives select committee seeking three months of her telephone records.

The committee sought Ward’s records as part of its probe into events surrounding the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters who sought to block Congress from certifying his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

The committee on Oct. 22 sent Trump himself a subpoena to testify under oath and provide documents. Trump filed a lawsuit on Friday in a bid to block the subpoena.

Trump, who is considering another run for the presidency in 2024, has accused the panel of waging unfair political attacks on him.

The panel has said Ward participated in multiple aspects of the attempts to interfere with the 2020 electoral count as Trump allies acted on his false claims that the election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud.

The records of the calls and text exchanges sought by the lawmakers spanned from Nov. 1, 2020, to Jan. 30, 2021, and covered a period when Ward was part of a group of Republicans who falsely presented themselves as Arizona’s presidential electors. The potential use of false electors was part of a scheme to foil congressional certification of the election results.

Ward’s lawyers argued that providing the committee with access to her telephone and text message records would violate the constitutional right to free association by giving the lawmakers access to names of Republican party members who spoke with her.

U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa in Arizona on Sept. 22 backed the subpoena, finding that Ward provided no evidence to support her claims that producing the records would chill such rights or result in harassment of those who interacted with her. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Oct. 22 declined to put the subpoena on hold while Ward appealed.

The House committee also has subpoenaed Ward herself as one in a group of people who it said had knowledge of or participated in efforts to send false “alternate electors” to Washington for Trump as Congress prepared to certify the election results. Ward and her husband, Michael Ward, both signed their names on one of the slates of alternate electors for Trump.

Congress certified the election results in the hours after the pro-Trump rioters attacked police with a variety of weapons and stormed the Capitol.

The future of the committee after the Nov. 8 midterm elections is uncertain. If Republicans gain control of the House, they are expected to shut down the committee’s work.

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan had temporarily put the subpoena on hold on Oct. 28 while the full court decided how to proceed. Kagan is the justice assigned to handle certain emergency requests from a group of states including Arizona.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in Washington and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)

By Tom Hals

WILMINGTON, Del (Reuters) -A trial over shareholder allegations that Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package was based on easy to achieve performance targets and that investors were duped into approving it began on Monday, with Musk slated to take the stand later this week.

A Tesla shareholder hopes to prove during the five-day trial that Musk used his dominance over the electric vehicle maker’s board to dictate terms of the 2018 package, which did not require him to work at Tesla full-time.

Musk, the world’s richest person, will testify on Wednesday, Greg Varallo, an attorney for shareholder Richard Tornetta, told a court in Wilmington, Delaware, on Monday.

The trial began with Ira Ehrenpreis, a Tesla board member since 2007 and chair of the committee that oversaw the pay package, describing the thinking behind the record-breaking compensation deal.

“I wanted to make sure that Elon remained as the leader of Tesla over a longer period of time,” Ehrenpreis testified, adding that he had been leading other ventures from rocket company SpaceX to tunneling firm The Boring Company.

The court was shown a brief video clip of Musk’s deposition in the case. He described how Ehrenpreis called him to discuss creating a pay package to replace his 2012 pay deal. Musk said he suggested to Ehrenpreis “a larger amount but with much harder milestones” than the 2012 deal.

Tornetta has asked the court to rescind the pay package, which is six times larger than the top 200 CEO salaries combined in 2021, according to Amit Batish of research firm Equilar.

Musk and Tesla’s directors, who are also defendants, have denied the allegations, arguing that the pay package ensured the entrepreneur would guide Tesla through a critical period, which helped drive the stock tenfold higher.

The lawsuit argues that the pay package should have required Musk to work full-time at Tesla.

The company’s shareholders have become concerned that Musk is distracted by Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion last month.

Musk told a business conference on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, on Monday that he had too much on his plate at the moment.

The case will be decided by Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware’s Court of Chancery, who also oversaw the legal dispute between Twitter Inc and Musk.

WIDE LATITUDE TO SET PAY

Legal experts said Musk is in a better legal position in the pay case than he was in Twitter’s lawsuit, which prevented him from walking away from the takeover.

Boards have wide latitude to set executive compensation, according to legal experts.

However, directors must meet more stringent legal tests if the pay involves a controlling shareholder. Part of this trial is likely to focus on whether that description fits Musk.

While he owned 21.9% of Tesla in 2018, plaintiffs are likely to cite what is seen as his domineering personality and ties to directors.

“There is no case in which a 21.9% shareholder who is also the chief executive has received a structured payout plan of this magnitude,” Lawrence Cunningham, a corporate law professor at George Washington University, said of the lack of precedent.

A pay battle between The Walt Disney Co and a shareholder shows how much deference Delaware courts give boards in setting compensation.

A Disney shareholder sued in 1997 over a $130 million severance payment to former president Michael Ovitz, who was with the company less than two years. The shareholder lost at trial in 2005, and the Delaware Supreme Court upheld the ruling in 2006.

The disputed Tesla package allows Musk to buy 1% of Tesla’s stock at a deep discount each time escalating performance and financial targets are met. Otherwise, Musk gets nothing.

Tesla has hit 11 of the 12 targets as its value ballooned briefly to more than $1 trillion from $50 billion, according to court papers.

A decision will likely take around three months after the trial and could be appealed to the Delaware Supreme Court.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco and Jody Godoy in New York; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Noeleen Walder and Bill Berkrot)