Elon Musk cleared in Dogecoin class action lawsuit

Elon Musk and his electric vehicle firm, Tesla, won a  class action lawsuit against them in 2022, alleging that Musk's comments manipulated Dogecoin DOGE -0.32% 's market and harmed investors.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice on Thursday, meaning it has been permanently dismissed.

In June 2022, investors sued Musk and his firm, claiming their activities around Dogecoin, including a series of tweets, had defrauded them. The investors alleged that Musk’s statements — including his claims about agreeing to become Dogecoin’s CEO and his suggestion of putting a Dogecoin in SpaceX and flying it to the moon — were misleading.

A group of investors filed a suit in the Southern District of New York on behalf of them against Musk and his businesses, Tesla and SpaceX.

“These statements are aspirational and puffery, not factual and susceptible to being falsified,” Judge Hellerstein wrote in his order, adding that no reasonable investor could rely upon them.

The judge also said that it is “not possible to understand” the allegations that form the basis of plaintiffs' conclusion of market manipulation, Musk and Tesla’s alleged “pump and dump” scheme, and a breach of a fiduciary duty amounting to insider trading.

Dogecoin, the ninth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, edged down 1.2% over the past 24 hours to trade at around $0.1. Its market cap currently stands at $14.6 billion.