Musk, Twitter head to October trial over buyout deal
July 19, 2022
Twitter's lawsuit against billionaire Elon Musk will go to trial in October, a US judge ruled on Tuesday.
The social media giant is suing the Tesla CEO for backing out of a $44 billion (€43 billion) buyout deal.
The CEO's lawyers had previously asked the court to delay the trial until early 2023 to allow for a careful review of Twitter's data, while the platform had pushed for the trial to start as early as September.
During Tuesday's hearing in a Delaware court, the judge said she expected the proceedings to last five days.
What is the case about?
Musk has said he pulled out of the deal because Twitter did not give him an accurate estimate of bot accounts on the platform. He also says Twitter breached its obligations by firing top managers and laying off a large number of employees.
Twitter wants the court to force the billionaire to go through with the transaction.
The Delaware Chancery Court is known for seeing corporate law cases. Kathaleen McCormick, the judge overseeing the case, is one of few jurists that have successfully ordered an unwilling buyer to go through with a US corporate merger.
The hearing marks the first in a potentially drawn out legal battle.
What did both sides say in court?
Attorney William Savitt, who was representing Twitter, called Musk's decision to walk away from the deal "attempted sabotage."
"He's doing his best to run Twitter down,'' he told the court.
Musk's attorney Andrew Rossman said the idea that the Tesla CEO is trying to damage Twitter is "preposterous. He has no interest in damaging the company,'' he said.
Musk's lawyers argue he is entitled to understand Twitter's active user base as it is "the very core of Twitter's business model."
"If Twitter is confident in its publicized spam estimates, Mr. Musk does not understand the company's reluctance to allow Mr. Musk to independently evaluate those estimates," wrote his lawyers in a legal document sent to Twitter prior to the trial.
Twitter's shares have struggled under what the platform says is "a cloud of Musk-created doubt."
"No public company of this size and scale has ever had to bear these uncertainties," the company wrote.
Twitter's shares fell by around 33% since the buyout deal was announced in April.
asw/nm (AFP, Reuters)