Alex Spiro, Elon Musk’s personal attorney, could be sanctioned over his conduct during a recent deposition with the billionaire — if the lawyer facing off against him in a legal battle gets his way.
Musk was deposed last month for a lawsuit against the X owner that alleges Musk boosted a conspiracy theory that falsely affiliated 22-year-old Ben Brody with a neo-Nazi group.
In a court filing from Monday, Brody’s lawyer, Mark Bankston — who famously represented the parents of a Sandy Hook victim and won a $45 million defamation case against Alex Jones — argued that Spiro had demonstrated “astonishingly unprofessional” behavior and “seriously overstepped his bounds” during the deposition, Bloomberg first reported.
Spiro repeatedly cut off Bankston’s line of questioning and attempted to make fun of Bankston, the lawyer wrote in his sanctions motion, according to Bloomberg.
Spiro pushed back on the motion in an emailed comment to Business Insider.
“This is amateur hour,” Spiro told BI. “I understand this lawyer wants his 15 minutes of fame, but these shakedown tactics won’t work.”
In the motion, Bankston claims Spiro was the only defense attorney present at the deposition even though he’s not authorized to practice law in Texas, according to Bloomberg’s report. The motion indicated that in the Texas case, two other lawyers who are permitted to practice in the state have also represented Musk, the publication said. Spiro is a partner at the New York office of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.
If a judge agrees with the motion, a sanction on Spiro could result in a dressing down by the judge or potentially a fine.
Things got heated between the two lawyers, the deposition transcript shows
Musk’s lawyer initially attempted to prevent the transcript from the deposition from being released to the public, but a judge denied his motion, HuffPost first reported on Monday.
When defendants are deposed in a civil trial, things can often get contentious. At several points in the deposition, Spiro and Bankston traded barbs.
Spiro objected to several questions Bankston posed to Musk, including the lawyer’s first question around whether the billionaire felt he’d done “anything wrong” to Brody.
“Okay. This isn’t a question you’re allowed to ask by the Court, so we’re not going to do this, Mark, or this deposition is going to be over before it starts,” Spiro said, adding later on that if Bankston wanted to ask that question he’d have to “go see the judge.”
In response, Bankston quoted Texas case law.
“You just showed your cards that this case is DOA and you can’t just get him talking as you put it,” Spiro said in response.
Spiro also accused Bankston of yelling during the deposition. Musk got in on the dispute as well at one point, telling Bankston to “calm yourself.”
“I’ve rarely met a lawyer with less decorum than you, if you could be called a lawyer,” Musk said to Bankston.
At another point, Bankston appeared to tell Spiro to calm down.
“Yeah, let’s go ahead and take a breath, Alex. First of all, I know you’re not a Texas attorney,” Bankston said after Spiro told his client not to answer one of his questions in the deposition.
In response, Spiro said Bankston was lecturing on Texas law.
“This isn’t — this isn’t productive,” Spiro said. “You want to go ask another question, go ask another question. You’re lecturing.”
At another point, Spiro accused the plaintiff’s lawyer of bringing forth “frivolous” lawsuits.
“You keep filing these silly, frivolous shake-down cases, I’ll keep trying to think of Texas lawyers to bring to your depositions,” Spiro said.
Both attorneys have been involved in some high-profile cases. Spiro is Musk’s go-to personal attorney and even helped the billionaire win a defamation lawsuit in 2019 after Musk called a diver who helped rescue a group of boys stranded in a cave in Thailand, a “pedo guy.”
Bankston, on the other hand, is known for representing Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of Sandy Hook victim Jesse Lewis, who was killed with 25 others in the 2012 shooting. The parents won a defamation lawsuit against Alex Jones in 2022, with a jury awarding $4.1 million to the parents in compensatory damages along with a $45.2 million ruling against Jones for punitive damages.
Bankston did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
