Monday 13 May 2019 9:09 am | Updated: Wednesday 05 June 2019 8:58 am

Tesla CEO Elon Musk faces trial over British diver ‘pedo’ tweet

Elon Musk is set to face trial after calling a diver who helped rescue the Thai schoolboys trapped in a cave a ‘pedo’ in a tweet.

Vern Unsworth is suing Tesla founder Musk after the billionaire called him a “pedo guy” on Twitter.

The Brit had criticised Musk’s own rescue attempt as a “PR stunt”.

The case will go to court in Los Angeles on 22 October, with Unsworth seeking $75,000 (£57,670) in compensation as well as damages.

While Unsworth put together a team of UK cave divers who helped free the boys trapped by rising water levels in a cave in July last year, Musk’s Tesla engineers built a small submarine and sent it to Thailand to assist in a rescue effort.

However, it was never used.

Unsworth dismissed the Space X entrepreneur’s attempt as a “publicity stunt” in an interview with CNN, prompting Musk to hit back online.

Musk set out how the submarine could successfully save the trapped schoolchildren, and also called Unsworth a “pedo guy”.

While Musk later apologised for the tweets and deleted them, he added fuel to the fire just two months later when he asked Buzzfeed to “find out what’s actually going on” and implied the diver had not helped with the rescue at all.

Unsworth’s court order also seeks to stop Musk making any further negative comments about the diver.

In his court filing, Unsworth said the tech visionary defamed him with “unlawful, unsupportable and reprehensible accusations”.

Musk’s legal team retailiated by claiming that “imaginative”, “over-the-top” insults could not be interpreted as statements of fact.

It is not the only incident in which Musk has got himself into hot water over his tweets.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined Musk and Tesla $20m each last year after the billionaire’s tweet in August 2018 claimed he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 per share.

The settlement also required Musk to get approval for any tweets material to Tesla – something the SEC claimed he failed to do in February this year when he tweeted about vehicle production numbers.

Musk denied the allegation, and the two were ordered to settle out of court.