Tesla Inc. is leaning on a Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan team, led by a lawyer who helped founder Elon Musk beat defamation claims at trial last year, in the company’s bid to seek a court order allowing it to reopen its Fremont, California, production plant.

Tesla sued Alameda County Saturday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claiming that county officials’ insistence that the plant remain closed to stem the spread of COVID-19 runs counter to state and local determinations that the company provides critical infrastructure, which the company contends should allow the plant to reopen.

Quinn Emanuel partner Alex Spiro. Courtesy photo)