https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191207/14312443519/subtweet-defense-wins-elon-musk-cleared-defamation-case.shtml

A little over a year ago when cave diver Vern Unsworth sued Elon Musk for defamation, we noted that (unlike many defamation cases), it did not appear to be an out-and-out SLAPP case. That said, we noted that many of the claims in the lawsuit did not look to be about defamatory speech at all, and that would make much of the lawsuit an uphill battle. The part that appeared to be the most problematic for Musk, however, was the emails he had sent to Buzzfeed reporter Ryan Mac after the initial tweets, in which he made more detailed accusations, including what appeared to be factual statements implying deeper knowledge about Unsworth.

However, as the case played out, Unsworth dropped any defamation claims regarding the emails. It appears that Musk had hit back on those claims by suggesting that if they were defamatory, they were actually Buzzfeed defaming Unsworth, since it was Buzzfeed that had published Musk's quotes. Perhaps to avoid getting bogged down in that fight, Unsworth's legal team chose to focus just on the tweets, and not the email -- even though the email seemed to go closest to the line (if not over) of defamation. Musk's legal team still then asked for the Buzzfeed emails evidence to be excluded from any damages calculation, which the judge allowed. In the end, the focus was just on his tweets, and that allowed for a courtroom explanation of how insults fly freely on Twitter, suggesting that most people engaged on Twitter know better than to take random accusations and insults as factual statements.