WILMINGTON, Delaware - Tesla Inc will urge a Delaware judge on Friday to reject $230 million in legal fees requested by a team of shareholder attorneys who won a settlement in a dispute over director pay.
The attorneys represented a Detroit police union pension plan that sued Tesla's directors for excessive compensation during 2017 to 2020. Nearly all of the directors' compensation comprised stock options and they only got paid if the stock rose. In recent years it swelled 10-fold. The attorneys want as their fee 25% of the settlement with the 12 directors, who include James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
The difference in the two values boils down to the stock options. At the time of the July settlement the options were worth $458 million to the directors.