The three law firms which won the case for Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA, ETR:TL0) shareholders against Elon Musk's $56 billion Tesla compensation package have requested $5.6 billion from the company in stock as legal fees.
In January a Delaware judge ruled that the pay package was unlawful.
The legal team's filing said: “We recognise that the requested fee is unprecedented in terms of absolute size.”
For the amount of time the lawyers worked on the case, the fee works out at an hourly rate of $288,888, the filing stated.
The three firms are Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann, Friedman Oster & Tejtel, and Andrews & Springer.
They said in the filing that the company should pay in shares as it has “the benefit of linking the award directly to the benefit created and avoids taking even one cent from the Tesla balance sheet to pay fees,” as well as being tax-deductible to the EV maker.
Musk's response to the initial judgment in January was one of frustration: “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware,” he said in a tweet.
The disputed pay package, designed to allow Musk to purchase Tesla shares at a discount upon meeting financial milestones, was challenged for its attainability and Musk's concurrent involvement in other ventures, including SpaceX and the acquisition of X/Twitter.
Tesla's directors defended the compensation's scale as necessary to maintain Musk's focus on the company, which has seen its value increase significantly since the agreement.