(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk’s now-infamous tweet saying he’d secured funding to take Tesla Inc. private did so much damage to so many different kinds of investors that he should have to face not one, but two or even three separate groups of securities fraud lawsuits, according to lawyers for shareholders.

A federal judge is weighing whether to divvy up the litany of complaints into categories, based on whether the investors had traditional long positions on the electric car-maker’s shares, were shorting the stock or were holding options.

The case presents “so many different types of investors and investments, long and short,” U.S. District Judge Edward Chen said at a hearing Thursday in San Francisco. “That may have some effect on how I measure who has the greatest financial interest.”

At issue are claims that Musk and Tesla manipulated the market with his Aug. 7 tweet -- “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured” -- and another tweet the same day saying, “Investor support is confirmed. Only reason why this is not certain is that it’s contingent on a shareholder vote.”

Reed Kathrein, a lawyer for some of the investors, said it’s a matter of protecting the disparate interests at stake.

“In this unusual case where shorts and option traders claim the largest losses -- yet are susceptible to unique defenses and damage calculations -- such separate representation is needed,” he wrote in a court filing.

The case is Isaacs v. Musk, 3:18-cv-04865, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

To contact the reporter on this story: Joel Rosenblatt in San Francisco at jrosenblatt@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg, Joe Schneider

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