{"id":14605,"date":"2026-06-02T18:25:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T01:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/02\/court-orders-elon-musk-to-turn-over-tesla-and-spacex-emails-in-apple-case\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T21:55:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T04:55:38","slug":"court-orders-elon-musk-to-turn-over-tesla-and-spacex-emails-in-apple-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/02\/court-orders-elon-musk-to-turn-over-tesla-and-spacex-emails-in-apple-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Court orders Elon Musk to turn over Tesla and SpaceX emails in Apple case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<figure class=\"img-border featured-image\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>United States District Judge Mark Pittman rejected xAI&#8217;s attempt to keep Elon Musk&#8217;s Tesla and SpaceX emails from being found in a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI. Here are the details.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-1054256\"\/><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-musk-to-turn-over-more-material-for-discovery\">Musk to change more things to find<\/h2>\n<p>Last month, the legal teams of Apple, OpenAI, X, and xAI held a hearing before United States Magistrate Judge Hal R. Ray, Jr., to address several disagreements regarding the discovery process in the lawsuit filed by Elon Musk against Apple and OpenAI.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit stemmed from Musk&#8217;s dissatisfaction with Grok&#8217;s positions in the app store, which he said were the result of a conflict between Apple and OpenAI over their relationship with ChatGPT&#8217;s Siri and Apple Intelligence powerhouses.<\/p>\n<p>At the hearing, Judge Ray granted X and xAI&#8217;s request to include Craig Federighi as a guardian, and also granted X and xAI&#8217;s request to compel Apple to turn over documents related to its recent agreement with Google for Gemini to enable the new Siri.<\/p>\n<p>In another ruling, Judge Ray accepted OpenAI&#8217;s argument that Elon Musk&#8217;s Tesla and SpaceX emails should be searched for material relevant to the case.<\/p>\n<p>Layers X and xAI initially told the court that these documents fell outside of their control, because they did not oversee SpaceX or Tesla. However, the argument did not sway Judge Ray.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, OpenAI&#8217;s argument that Musk &#8220;is the CEO of all of these companies, and these are the accounts that he clearly uses for the business of all of these companies&#8221; succeeded, helped in part by the fact that there were &#8220;internal documents where his own CFO at X.AI sent him an email about X.AI&#8217;s business from his SpaceX account.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, the legal team for X and xAI filed an objection in an attempt to overturn Judge Ray&#8217;s decision. They also applied for a stay of the order pending the court&#8217;s decision on the objection.<\/p>\n<p>Today, Judge Pittman, who had referred those discovery disputes to Judge Ray (a common practice in federal courts), dismissed X and xAI&#8217;s motion, affirmed Judge Ray&#8217;s findings, and, accordingly, also denied X and xAI&#8217;s motion to stay.<\/p>\n<p>In his order, Judge Pittman wrote:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Here, because there is reason to believe that Musk may be conducting X and\/or xAI business on his SpaceX and Tesla business email accounts, the emails are available and must be produced. Those pieces of evidence consistent with Musk&#8217;s ownership and high-level roles in these companies compel the Court to do this.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Again<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>As noted, the record also provides some reason to believe that Musk may be conducting plaintiffs&#8217; business from some of his email accounts. For example, xAI&#8217;s CFO sent xAI&#8217;s financial updates to Musk&#8217;s SpaceX email address. That alone is enough to compel discovery here because iX and xAI are entitled to documents where the CEO uses non-company email accounts to conduct company business\u2014whether those are personal email accounts or not is irrelevant.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Judge Pittman did not set a deadline for the production of these emails.<\/p>\n<p>During the hearing on May 13, Judge Ray asked the lawyers of X and xAI how long it would take to produce the emails, the legal team replied that they did not know, adding that &#8220;it will take a little time, but we will go as soon as possible, if we are ordered to do so.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-worth-checking-out-on-amazon\">It&#8217;s worth checking out on Amazon<\/h4>\n<div class=\"google-preferred-source-badge\">\n<p>\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"google-preferred-source-badge-dark\" src=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/themes\/ninetofive\/dist\/images\/google-preferred-source-badge-dark.png\" alt=\"Add 9to5Mac as a favorite source on Google\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"google-preferred-source-badge-light\" src=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/themes\/ninetofive\/dist\/images\/google-preferred-source-badge-light.png\" alt=\"Add 9to5Mac as a favorite source on Google\"\/><\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"ad-disclaimer-container\">\n<p class=\"disclaimer-affiliate\"><em>FTC: We use auto affiliate links to earn income.<\/em> More.<\/p>\n<p><!-- post ad --><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>United States District Judge Mark Pittman rejected xAI&#8217;s attempt to keep Elon Musk&#8217;s Tesla and SpaceX emails from being found in a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI. Here are the details. Musk to change more things to find Last month, the legal teams of Apple, OpenAI, X, and xAI held a hearing before United States [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14605","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-laptops-gear"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14607,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14605\/revisions\/14607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runwayritz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}