A judge has blocked Elon Musk from receiving a record-breaking $56billion (£47billion) pay award from his company Tesla.
The Delaware court ruling follows a lengthy legal tussle and comes despite shareholders and directors voting through the award in the summer.
But now, Judge Kathaleen McCormick has upheld her previous ruling against the pay award from January, which said Tesla board members were too heavily influenced by chief executive Musk.
Taking to his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, in the wake of the decision, Musk claimed: "Shareholders should control company votes, not judges."
Tesla also posted, saying: "This ruling, if not overturned, means that judges and plaintiffs’ lawyers run Delaware companies rather than their rightful owners – the shareholders."
Judge McCormick, the BBC reports, said Tesla had failed to prove the pay package, which dates back to 2018 and would have been the largest ever for the boss of a listed company, was fair.
She also ruled the Tesla shareholder who brought the case against Tesla and Musk should receive $345million in fees but not the $5.6billion in Tesla shares they had been looking for.
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