I’m not sure what will be accomplished by fining a multi-billion dollar privately-owned company for not complying with a search warrant … why would they just not ignore the fine as well?? Clearly legal requirements are not a primary consideration. Unless and until the person in charge faces handcuffs, nothing else is likely to have much impact on behavior change.

@darkuncle

The fine is step 1. If they ignore the fine, step 2 is usually a bigger fine. Step 3 involves court-appointed oversight of internal operations to ensure compliance. You don't want step 3. You really don't want 1 or 2 either. It happens all the time, but usually it's bankruptcy and chemical spills and so on that trigger it, because *sane* companies respond to (or contest) a subpoena promptly rather than just ignore it.

@Biggles so none of that accounts for an owner who simply ignores the court and stalls/appeals indefinitely. I suppose *eventually* there might be contempt of court, but unless and until there are handcuffs in the picture I don’t see anything changing

@darkuncle

One assumes Elon isn't opening the mail. But assuming he's doing it on purposes, it's fine, $Fine, $FINE$ - then the US Marshals show up and inform the company officers that these fine people who came with them are their boss now, not Elon. The courts can and do remove operative control over companies that don't comply with court orders. And if there's evidence it *was* Elon intentionally doing it - obstruction of justice is a crime all it's own. Point is - there's no scenario where the court gets bored and gives up and goes away if you ignore the request. Maybe Elon is rich enough that fines escalating by orders of magnitude are nothing to him - but control? He won't let that happen.