By Tom Hals, Hyunjoo Jin5 Min ReadWILMINGTON, Del (Reuters) -Elon Musk mentioned in court docket on Wednesday that he made some Tesla Inc choices with out the approval of the corporate’s administrators, as he defended his $56 billion pay package deal in opposition to claims that he dictated its phrases to a compliant board.Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta sued Musk and the board in 2018 and hopes to show that Musk used his dominance over Tesla’s board to acquire an outsized compensation package deal that didn’t require him to work on the electrical automobile maker full-time.Questioned by Tornetta’s lawyer, Greg Varallo, Musk rejected claims that his pay package deal targets had been straightforward to realize.“The amount of pain, no words can express,” Musk mentioned in a near-whisper, describing the trouble required to get the corporate from brink of failure in 2017 to explosive progress. “It’s pain I would not wish to inflict upon anyone.”Varallo repeatedly sought to painting Tesla as an organization below the grip of Musk, the world’s richest particular person, and tried to indicate that Musk bypassed Tesla’s board on a number of events.For instance, Musk mentioned he made a unilateral name on ending Tesla’s acceptance of Bitcoin cryptocurrency and acknowledged that the board was not knowledgeable earlier than he informed analysts in October that Tesla’s board was contemplating shopping for again as much as $10 billion of inventory.But the testimony didn’t undoubtedly show who developed Musk’s 2018 pay package deal or set up whether or not it was a product of his calls for somewhat than negotiations with the board.The five-day trial comes as Musk is struggling to supervise a chaotic overhaul of Twitter Inc, which he was compelled to purchase for $44 billion in a separate authorized battle earlier than the identical choose, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, after attempting to again out of that deal.Musk tweeted this week that he was remaining at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters across the clock till he mounted that firm’s issues, and mentioned on Wednesday he had come to Delaware on an in a single day flight from the social media firm.Slideshow ( 4 photographs )Musk mentioned his concentrate on restructuring Twitter would quickly wind down and he would discover another person to steer it. He was dismissive of the argument that his pay deal ought to have obligated him to spend a set variety of hours at Tesla.“I pretty much work all the time,” he mentioned. “I don’t know what a punch clock would achieve.”While Musk has a historical past of combative testimony, calling attorneys “reprehensible” or “a bad human being,” he was comparatively restrained in Wednesday’s proceedings, although at instances expressed frustration with Tornetta’s lawyer.At one level, Musk informed the plaintiff lawyer, “your question is a complex question that is commonly used to mislead people.”Musk acknowledged that he was not a lawyer however added, “when you’re in enough lawsuits you pick up a few things.”A ‘PRODUCT GENIUS’Tornetta has requested the court docket to rescind the 2018 package deal, which his lawyer mentioned was $20 billion bigger than the annual gross home product of the state of Delaware.The authorized staff for Musk and the Tesla administrators have forged the pay package deal as a set of audacious targets that labored by driving 10-fold progress in Tesla’s inventory worth, to greater than $600 billion from round $50 billion.Slideshow ( 4 photographs )They have argued the plan was developed by impartial board members, suggested by exterior professionals and with enter from massive shareholders.Tornetta’s lawyer tried to indicate Musk was concerned from the beginning. An e mail from May 2017 appeared to ascertain that Musk was pushing for the pay plan months earlier than the board negotiated it with him.“I’m planning something really crazy, but also high risk,” he wrote.Antonio Gracias, a enterprise capital investor and longtime buddy of Musk who was additionally a Tesla board member from 2007 to 2021, took the stand after Musk testified.Gracias mentioned he was ready to push again on Musk if obligatory. “I don’t pull punches with any of my CEOs,” he informed the court docket.The disputed Tesla package deal permits Musk to purchase 1% of Tesla’s inventory at a deep low cost every time escalating efficiency and monetary targets are met. Otherwise, Musk will get nothing.Tesla has hit 11 of the 12 targets, in keeping with court docket papers.Shareholders usually can not problem government compensation as a result of courts sometimes defer to the judgment of administrators. The Musk case survived a movement to dismiss as a result of it was decided he could be thought of a controlling shareholder, which implies stricter guidelines apply.Gracias described Musk as important to the corporate’s success in his testimony, calling him “extraordinary” and a “product genius.”Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington in Delaware and Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Jody Godoy; Writing by Denny Thomas;Editing by Noeleen Walder, Jonathan Oatis and Bill BerkrotOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.