Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, attends the Viva Technology conference at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 16, 2023.
Elon Musk's 2018 CEO pay package from Tesla , worth some $56 billion when it vested, must be restored, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled Friday.
"We reverse the Court of Chancery's rescission remedy and award $1 in nominal damages," the judges wrote in their opinion.
In the decision out Friday, the Delaware Supreme Court judges said a lower court's decision to rescind Musk's 2018 pay plan was too extreme a remedy, and the lower court did not give Tesla a chance to say what a fair compensation ought to be.
The decision on the appeal in this case, known as Tornetta v. Musk, likely ends the years-long fight over Musk's record-setting compensation.
Musk's 2018 CEO pay package from Tesla, comprised of 12 milestone-based tranches of stock, was unprecedented at the time it was proposed. After it was granted, the pay plan made Musk the wealthiest individual in the world.
A shareholder named Richard J. Tornetta sued, filing a derivative action in 2018, accusing Musk and the Tesla board of a breach of their fiduciary duties.