Remember when Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick tried to retroactively take away all of Elon Musk's pay as CEO of Tesla?
The Tesla shareholders are having none of that judge's antics. They just voted to not only reinstate Musk's pay package, but also to move the company's headquarters out of Delaware to Texas.
That's a lot of lost corporate tax for Delaware that will now benefit the Lone Star State.
Years ago, Musk accepted stock options as compensation in lieu of cash. At the time the compensation package was awarded, that stock was only worth about $2.6 billion (and contingent on Musk meeting certain financial goals).
He not only met them, but turned the company into a trillion-dollar enterprise. The value of those stock options soared to $57 billion.
They are now worth about $45 billion: around the price the same judge forced Musk to pay for Twitter.
Elon says he's sticking around for the long run:
At the company's annual meeting Thursday in Austin, Texas, Musk reassured shareholders that he will stick around, telling them he can't sell any stock in the compensation package for five years.
‘It's not actually cash, and I can't cut and run, nor would I want to,' he said.
Sadly, since Tesla was still a Delaware company at the time of this vote, Judge McCormick could still play the hacktivist and try to get Elon some other way.
Now that the shareholders have spoken, however, there's no veil for her to hide behind if she wants to be a partisan hack who uses lawfare to destroy from the bench a businessman that she doesn't like. Considering the corporate exodus out of Delaware, thanks to her actions and the actions of her peers, she might want to take a breather before the state goes bankrupt.
John Lawrence, a lawyer who defends corporations against shareholder lawsuits, said this:
‘This shareholder vote is a strong signal that you now have an absolutely well-informed body of shareholders,' he said. ‘The judge in Delaware still could decide that this doesn't change a thing about her prior ruling and doesn't require her to make any different ruling going forward. But I think it definitely gives Tesla and Musk strong ammunition to try to get her to revisit this.'
One way the judge could still be a thorn in the side is by moving to force Tesla to settle legal matters in the state, even if it isn't headquartered there.
TripAdvisor recently fled Delaware as well, but Delaware Vice Chancellor Travis Laster maintained that shareholders could still sue the company in Delaware if the move to Nevada hurt the company's stock.
Will Elon finally be free, or are the haters gonna try something new?
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