Musk attorneys seek to depose BuzzFeed reporter

Attorneys for Elon Musk are seeking to depose a BuzzFeed writer the Tesla CEO pressed to investigate a man now suing him for defamation.

Citing California's Shield Law, writer Ryan Mac sought to block a subpoena ordering him to testify in a case against Musk by plaintiff Vernon Unsworth. But in a filing Friday in the Central District of California, attorneys for Musk said the law is limited to "unpublished information obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving or processing of information for communication to the public."

Musk said the shield law wouldn't apply because his communication with Mac, in which he instructed Mac to investigate rumors of Unsworth's alleged pedophilia, was understood to be off-the-record. Vernon Unsworth v. Elon Musk, 9-mc-80224 (C.D. Cal., filed Sept. 27, 2019).

"A key issue in the case is whether it was reasonably foreseeable to Mr. Musk that Mr. Mac and BuzzFeed would ignore the off-the-record qualification that Mr. Musk conspicuously placed in his email, disregard his request that Mr. Mac investigate the matter before writing about it further, and publish the information with attribution to Mr. Musk," Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP attorney Alex Spiro, a counsel to Musk, wrote in Friday's filing. "BuzzFeed's guidelines for treating such information, which it modified after it republished Mr. Musk's remarks, bear on that question."

A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Oct. 17 before Magistrate Judge Jacqueline S. Corley.

-- Steven Crighton