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Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

I'm unfamiliar with the US legal system but do they really need a jury and a trial to determine whether the claims are barred by the statute of limitations? Couldn't this be decided by a judge before trial?

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Part of the Statute of Limitations isn't just on when he filed the claim, but when he found out or should have found out, by reasonable diligence that he had a claim at all.

So the question before the jury has a significant component of "Should he have found out by this time?" Which is a question of fact, and facts are typically decided by juries, in the US at least.

The two parties can agree together to let a judge decide facts like this, but generally, if one or the other party wants it to go to a jury, it does.

I'm guessing part of Musk's strategy was to have it go to the jury, which are often seen as easier to manipulate than judges, especially when a case is weak. Or perhaps his team already knew this particular judge would be inclined to rule against him, so did the next best thing.

Also, it's worth pointing out that the jury was obviously correct. Musk was lying his ass off. There is no possible way to imagine that Elon Musk, the hyper-online dude obsessed with news, AI, and AI news, would not be aware of the well-publicized events of a company he was personally massively invested in.

I'm having a hard time squaring this view with the prediction markets. 500k+ of volume on Polymarket[0] had Elon losing at only even odds until March, 2:1 until May 15th, and 3:1 before the verdict dropped.

It seems to have been widely reported from the start[1] and throughout[2] that the statute of limitations was a key thing Musk's team had to prove. If it was so clear, why did people think this case had legs?

[0] https://polymarket.com/event/will-elon-musk-win-his-case-aga... [1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/musk-lawsuit-over-o... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/05/14/technology/openai-tr...

A lot of people on polymarket thinking something is the case is probably evidence that it's not.

https://www.google.com/search?q=percentage+of+people+who+los...

Postulate: Prediction markets are not exceptionally good at predicting everything.

If Prediction markets were good at predicting anything, there would be no need for prediction markets (because the future is already clear to everyone).

Prediction markets depend on the "wisdom of crowds", but often the crowd doesn't exercise its wisdom--which is generally pretty good--but instead exercises its wishful thinking or desires.

cf: Sports betting.

Elon argued that even though the events in question took place sometime between 2017 and 2020 OpenAI intentionally hid the information from him until 2022-2023 which is why he wasn't able to file the lawsuit until 2024.

That's what the jury found against - they said he was reasonably informed enough to have brought the suit earlier and thus the 3 year clock should start ticking in 2020 not 2023.

In the US, judges make determinations of law, but juries (in a jury trial at least) must evaluate the evidence to make findings of fact. So the jury would need to make a finding as to when the statute of limitations started ticking based on the evidence, and the judge then makes the legal determination that the statutory period has lapsed.

In the American system juries figure out questions of fact and judges figure out questions of law.

In this case I guess the question was 'when did the incident actually happen' with Elon arguing it was later then Altman.

In the US (I believe all common law systems), the jury is the trier of fact. If there is a genuine factual dispute between the two parties in a lawsuit, then that dispute is resolved by a jury (unless the parties opt-out).

Statutes of limitations are usually not tried by juries because the underlying facts that cause them to kick in are usually not in actual dispute. Instead a fight over statute of limitation is more likely to be over which statute applies or whether some other mitigating circumstance is kicking in, which are matters of law which do not go to a jury.

I'll piggyback and I'll ask a hypothetical question: imagine a scenario where there's a jury out there and the lawyers proved something almost perfectly, as perfect as something proven by lawyers can get. Now jury goes to deliberate/discuss and for some reason unanimously decides to rule in a way that goes totally against that proof provided - for any reason (maybe just for the kicks, ignore that; because I guess it is ignored). What happens then? Can a judge say to that "bugger off, this is bs" or something like that instead offer their own judgement or have another jury or so? Or is it - tough luck, jury is jury, deal with it. And they can appeal if there's scope of appeal (don't know how that is decided whether one can appeal or not to begin with).

I think that there have been such instances - (I can only speculate, but I think that) the judge can rule a mistrial, or it can be heard on appeal.

Ah google to the rescue:

> In the U.S., a jury’s factual findings can only be challenged post-trial if an appellate court or trial judge determines that no reasonable jury could have reached that verdict based on the evidence.

And

Civil Cases - (Judgment as a Matter of Law / JNOV): Governed by Rule 50 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a judge can overturn a jury’s factual finding if the evidence is legally insufficient to support it.

Criminal Cases - (Insufficiency of the Evidence): Under the Fifth Amendment's Double Jeopardy clause, an acquittal cannot be appealed or overturned. However, after a guilty verdict, a defendant can file a motion challenging the evidence, asserting that the facts do not support the conviction

Things like that have happened before.

It’s called Jury Nullification.

More info below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

In this case the judge determined that it did require a trial and refused to dismiss based on statute of limitations.

There was a way that the statute of limitations hadn't run out as the clock started when Elon became aware of OpenAI's shift to for-profit ambitions. That made it more subjective of a judgement than simply reading a calendar, so it went to a jury to determine when Elon knew OpenAI started planning to change structure to be for-profit, then they could look at a calendar.

Bit late, but since I don’t see any correct answers here - no a jury is not required here. The judge chose to convene an *advisory* jury here — likely to strengthen the factual findings of the court and maybe to save the court itself some time/effort.

If it’s a very clear fact yes a judge can make the call. In this case what Musk knew was part of that and a jury then had to make the call on what the fact was.

That's like saying can't the Judge decide who the killer was when he literally saw the video of shooting.

Or like if a piece of evidence was obtained lawfully?

I can understand why people and me included might think they can decide this before trial.

These days, video evidence can be called into doubt pretty easily

One still need to decide:

- if the video is real (not AI / edited / another event)

- if the subject the same person (twins, look alike, too bury to tell)

etc

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