Elon Musk to go on trial for calling British cave rescuer a paedophile

San Francisco: Electric Vehicle (EV) maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk will undergo trial in October in a defamation case that was filed against him last year by a British cave rescuer who sued the billionaire for calling him a paedophile.

A federal court judge in Los Angeles set an October 22 trial date in recent court filing that rejected Musk's attempt to dismiss the defamation lawsuit filed by the British diver Vernon Unsworth, The Telegraph reported on Saturday.

Musk had called Unsworth a "paedo" in a July 15 post on Twitter after Unsworth, in an interview with CNN, dismissed Musk's attempts to help rescue the soccer players as a "PR stunt".

The brief feud between the two ensued post the rescue of a soccer team that was trapped in a cave in Thailand.

Unsworth, who helped with the rescue operation, criticised Musk's dubious plan to save the team with a "kid-sized submarine."

Musk later doubled down on the insult by tweeting "bet ya a signed dollar it's true," then elaborated even further in emails to BuzzFeed -- flatly asserting that Unsworth had moved to Thailand "for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time", The Verge reported.

The Tesla CEO had faced a widespread backlash after unsuccessfully attempting to assist the rescue mission and eventually apologised to Unsworth and deleted the offending tweet.