Musk Favors Conservative Boutique in Actress Fight With Disney

Elon Musk’s X Corp. appears to have a new go-to outside counsel for lawsuits it decides to finance for users facing blowback from employers over posts they make to the social media platform.

Schaerr Jaffe, a trial and appellate litigation boutique known for taking on politically conservative causes, is representing Gina Carano in a lawsuit filed this week against the Walt Disney Co. over her 2021 firing after the actress made social media posts that were deemed antisemitic and transphobic.

“We’ll handle as many as we can,” said Schaerr Jaffe name partner Gene Schaerr, a veteran litigator who touts an appellate win rate above 75%, in an email. “You can probably tell from Elon’s tweets that he’s very interested in this whole area.”

Carano disclosed via X, which Musk rebranded last year from Twitter, the company’s role financing her lawsuit. Musk piggybacked on her announcement with a series of posts encouraging others with similar claims to join in and pursue cases against Disney and its affiliates. Musk and Disney have been at odds after Disney, along with other companies, paused their ad spending following Musk’s endorsement of antisemitic remarks on the site.

Musk has fashioned himself a free speech absolutist, despite X firing some staffers who have spoken out against the company. The technology mogul took to X last summer to publicize his offer to pick up some legal tabs. “If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill,” Musk said in an Aug. 5 post via X.

By funding litigation as a third party, Musk enters a space that fellow PayPal Holdings Inc. co-founder and billionaire Peter Thiel entered several years ago by backing a lawsuit that pushed Gawker Media LLC into bankruptcy.

Schaerr wouldn’t disclose whether his firm has any other Musk-backed cases in its pipeline but said the only two matters of public record are the lawsuit filed by Carano and another engagement from late last year that saw Schaerr Jaffe defend University of Illinois student Juan David Campolargo.

Campolargo used X to share events on campus where there was free food, one of which turned out to be a private conference. Schaerr Jaffe threatened to file a lawsuit for Campolargo but eventually helped him win an appeal in January—a victory announced by X—of a disciplinary action brought against him by the school, which claimed his X posts violated its student code of conduct.

Big Law Backgrounds

Carano’s civil complaint filed in a Los Angeles federal court shows that Schaerr is working with partners H. Christopher Bartolomucci, Donald Falk, and Edward Trent on the Disney case. All four litigators have spent time in Big Law.

Schaerr, a Utah native, was once co-chair of the religious institutions group at Sidley Austin and chair of the appellate and critical motions practice at Winston & Strawn, while Bartolomucci spent time as a partner at Bancroft, Kirkland & Ellis, and Hogan Lovells. Falk joined Schaerr Jaffe from Mayer Brown in 2022. Trent, an ex-Akerman partner, was promoted to partner at Schaerr Jaffe in 2023.

Clients ranging from prison inmates to high-profile individuals such as Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, have turned to Schaerr Jaffe for representation since the firm, which has offices in San Francisco and Washington, was founded a decade ago.

Schaerr, whose other clients include Carter Page, a former political adviser to President Donald Trump, also serves as general counsel for the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability, a nonpartisan advocacy group that on its website supported Musk and X in their appeal last year of a long-running lawsuit filed by Twitter that unsuccessfully sought to restrict US government access to user information in national security investigations. The Supreme Court ultimately declined to hear an appeal from X last month.

Federal tax filings show the PPSA paid more than $2.4 million to Schaerr Jaffe between 2019 and 2021. The firm received another $360,000 from the nonprofit organization last year to lobby on a variety of issues, including proposed legislation designed to protect American citizens from government spying tools and surveillance programs, according to public records.

X Looking for Litigators

Schaerr declined to detail his discussions with in-house lawyers at X, which last year hired Adam Mehes as its head of litigation. Mehes is a former litigator at Davis Polk & Wardwell who had previously worked at Musk’s Tesla Inc.

Mehes and a spokesman for X didn’t respond to comment requests about Musk’s protocols for vetting potential lawsuits. In a post last year to LinkedIn, Mehes said X was “looking to hire some lawyers and paralegals to litigate matters on behalf of the company (not through outside counsel).”

In January, X hired senior counsel Zacharia “Zack” Chibane from his role as a litigation associate at Spears & Imes, a New York firm absorbed last month by Blank Rome. Chibane, a former football player, had previously been an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which advised Musk on his $44 billion acquisition of what was once Twitter Inc. Adeeb Sahar, a former Skadden associate who worked on that deal, was one of Musk’s first X legal hires.

X also hired former VideoAmp Inc. senior director and associate general counsel Austin Rocker as legal counsel in December after adding former White & Case associate E. Benjamin Elron—who had been seconded to the company—as senior counsel for its litigation team. Austin Lomax, a former corporate counsel at Amazon.com Inc., also joined X last year as a senior product counsel.