Elon Musk handed major blow in lawsuit against advertisers as judge tosses case

Even though Elon Musk might be far and away the richest man in the world, that doesn't mean he's above the law.

While it's got more money than he could seemingly ever spend, he's arguably got more ongoing legal battles than you can shake a stick at.

While it's good news that one of his courtroom wranglings has come to an end, it's fair to say it hasn't gone in Mr. Musk's favor.

Always keen to add another string to his bow, Elon Musk famously bought X (formerly Twitter) back in October 2022. Shelling out a whopping $44 billion, there are arguments that it wasn't exactly a shrewd financial move, as the social media giant has hemorrhaged money since he took the reins.

Part of the problem has been complaints that X has turned into a 'poison' prison where right-wing voices have been amplified, and minorities are facing more discrimination than ever.

Elsewhere, those on the other side claim they've had their posts strangled amid censorship.

Either way, there's been a mass exodus of celebrity names and news outlets alike, especially in the aftermath of Musk revamping the former Twitter Blue verification system, as well as removing the block feature, and allegations that misinformation is running rampant.

If that wasn't enough to contend with, there was recent drama when countries threatened to block X over Grok's apparent manipulation of images involving minors.

Musk has vocally clapped back at some of the big names that have left X behind, notably launching an August 2024 antitrust lawsuit. Filed in the Northern District of Texas, X Corp alleged that the World Federation of Advertisers, Unilever, Mars, CVS, and Ørsted had conspired to hold back "billions of dollars in advertising revenue" from the social media juggernaut.

The World Federation of Advertisers created the Global Alliance for Responsible Media in 2019, then shut down just days after Musk's organization started legal proceedings on August 6.

As reported by the BBC, U.S. District Judge Jane Boyle has thrown out the case, saying that X Corp was unable to show that it had actually suffered any harm under federal competition laws.

Within the first year of taking control of X, Musk alleged that ad revenue had almost halved, with things supposedly getting worse. Around the time of launching the lawsuit, Musk tweeted: "We tried being nice for 2 years and got nothing but empty words. Now, it is war."

GARM was created with an aim to "help the industry address the challenge of illegal or harmful content on digital media platforms and its monetisation via advertising," although CVS and the other defendants maintain that they'd acted independently and were making business decisions on where they wanted to spend their advertising money. In counter-filings, defendants appealed to Boyle to dismiss X Corp's lawsuit.

This appeared to ring true with the judge, who wrote that GARM "did not buy advertising space from X to sell to advertisers nor did it, in such an arrangement, tell X not to sell directly to GARMs customers."

Summarizing why she sided against X Corp, Boyle concluded: "The very nature of the alleged conspiracy does not state an antitrust claim, and the court therefore has no qualm dismissing with prejudice."