* Jury finds Musk liable for two statements over Twitter

bots

* Shareholders' lawyer says damages could reach billions

of dollars

* Musk plans appeal, lawyers call verdict a bump in the

road

(Changes sourcing; adds verdict details, lawyers' comments,

paragraphs 2-5, 10-13)

By Abhirup Roy and Jonathan Stempel

SAN FRANCISCO, March 20 (Reuters) - A U.S. federal jury

found Elon Musk liable on Friday for claims he defrauded Twitter

shareholders by trying to drive down the social media company's

stock price so he could renegotiate or back out of a $44 billion

takeover in 2022.

The verdict from a jury in San Francisco federal court came

in a closely watched civil trial where Musk, the world's richest

person, was accused of falsely claiming on social media that

Twitter underreported how many fake and spam accounts, known as

bots, were on its platform.

Damages have yet to be calculated but Francis Bottini, a

lawyer for the shareholders, estimated they could total about

$2.5 billion.

"Musk's status as the world's richest man is not a free

pass," Bottini said in a statement. "If you're able to move

markets with your tweets you're responsible for the harm you

cause to investors."

In a joint statement, Musk's lawyers at Quinn Emanuel

Urquhart & Sullivan called the verdict "a bump in the road. And

we look forward to vindication on appeal."

The civil trial began on March 2, and jurors began

deliberating on Tuesday.

Musk has often chosen to battle shareholders in court rather

than settle.

This included a 2023 trial in San Francisco over whether he

defrauded Tesla shareholders who claimed to suffer

losses after he falsely claimed in 2018 to have "funding

secured" to take the electric car company private, and

litigation in Delaware over his $139 billion Tesla pay package.

Musk won both cases.

Musk ultimately completed his purchase of Twitter in October

2022 and renamed it X.

MUSK LIABLE FOR TWO STATEMENTS

Twitter shareholders challenged three statements Musk made

not long after agreeing in April 2022 to buy Twitter, where he

questioned whether the company was overrun with bots.

Jurors found Musk liable for two of the statements.

One said the purchase was "temporarily on hold" pending

confirmation that bots represented less than 5% of users. The

other said the percentage of bots could be "much" higher than

20%, and the takeover could not go forward unless Twitter's

chief executive proved the percentage was less than 5%.

Jurors also said the shareholders didn't prove a separate

claim that Musk engaged in a scheme to defraud them.

Michael Lifrak, a lawyer for Musk, countered that the

billionaire's concern about bots was real, and that speaking out

about the problem did not show Musk committed or intended to

commit fraud.

The lawsuit covers investors who claimed to sell Twitter

shares at prices Musk artificially depressed between May 13 and

October 4, 2022.

Musk is separately in talks to settle a U.S. Securities and

Exchange Commission civil lawsuit accusing him of waiting too

long in 2022 to disclose his initial purchases of Twitter so he

could buy more at low prices before investors saw what he was

doing.

In February, Musk's rocket and space exploration company

SpaceX bought his artificial intelligence company xAI, which

housed X. The purchase created the world's most valuable private

company, worth about $1.25 trillion at the time.