John C. Hueston

When Elon Musk ran afoul of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for tweeting about lining up funds to take Tesla private, he called Hueston. The financing offer Musk mentioned did not materialize, the electric car maker's stock gyrated wildly, and the SEC accused Musk of using Twitter to mislead investors.

"Many analysts predicted that Musk would be removed as CEO of Tesla," Hueston said, after the SEC filed its complaint about Musk's alleged false and reckless statements. SEC v. Musk, 18-cv-08865 (S.D. N.Y., filed Sept. 27, 2018). The commission later asked a judge to hold Musk in contempt for violating an agreement that he get pre-approval for social media posts about Tesla.

Hueston was already defending Musk in a defamation suit by a British cave diver, whom Musk described in a tweet as a "pedo guy." And the lawyer also represents Tesla in a suit with a former worker.

To defend against the SEC, "We came up with a number of creative arguments," Hueston said. "The gag order was void for vagueness and violative of the First Amendment."

U.S. District Judge Alison Julie Nathan of New York set aside the government's contempt request.

"We got what we wanted," Hueston added. "We got redrafting for clarity of the government's stipulated oversight order."

In February, Hueston got the news that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with him, 9-0, that an important class certification appellate filing deadline in the Rules of Civil Procedure cannot be tolled. The justices adopted Hueston's argument -- in his first appearance at the high court -- that mandatory claim-processing rules are unalterable if properly raised. The win preserved Hueston Hennigan's victory at the lower court, where it obtained decertification of the potential plaintiff class, and reversed a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel, which allowed the tolling. Nutraceutical Corp. v. Lambert, 17-1094 (S. Ct., filed Feb. 1, 2018).

"A career moment for me," Hueston said of his oral argument experience. "Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg is one of my heroes in the law, and she asked the first question. Mandatory claim processing rules is one of the things she has written about. There were questions from eight of the nine judges, Justice [Clarence] Thomas excepted."

Hueston prepared at moot courts at UC Irvine School of Law and at Georgetown University Law Center. "You learn just how close the justices are to you, just a few feet away," he said. "My daughter was there too. Afterwards she told me, 'Dad, it didn't show, but I could tell how excited you were.'"

-- John Roemer