Twitter Inc’s lawsuit will be on hold Elon Musk His $44 billion takeover is set to go to trial in October after a Delaware judge said Tuesday that the social media company deserves a speedy resolution of the uncertainty. certainty of the agreement.
The ruling is a blow to Musk, who has pushed for a trial in February that his lawyer told the court would allow for a far-reaching investigation into the true number of spam accounts on the platform. this platform. Twitter requested a trial in September.
Premier Kathaleen McCormick of the Premier Court in Delaware said the parties have the ability to handle an emergency hearing.
“The reality is that the delay threatens irreparable damage to the seller,” she said, referring to Twitter.
She asked the parties to draw up a schedule for the trial, which she set as five days.
Twitter shares rose throughout Tuesday morning and were up 3.6% at $39.81 in the early afternoon.
Twitter wants McCormick to find Musk in breach of the merger agreement and order him to complete the merger at the agreed price of $54.20 per share. They said they needed a trial date as soon as possible in the event Musk was ordered to shut down and then needed additional litigation to resolve the financial issue.
Twitter’s attorney William Savitt argued during the hearing that the number of bot accounts and spam on their service was unrelated to their deal with Musk. He said Musk grasped the issue because he was looking to “suggest an exit to a no-deal.”
Musk has argued that an urgent test would prevent the truth about spam from coming to light.
A lawyer for Musk at Tuesday’s hearing accused Twitter of faltering in responding to Musk’s requests for information regarding methods for calculating spam account counts.
Andrew Rossman, Musk’s attorney, said: “When Musk started asking questions, the answers he received were alarming. He said it would take months to analyze massive amounts of data to resolve Musk’s questions about spam accounts on Twitter.
Rossman also pushed back against the notion that Musk was trying to harm Twitter, pointing out that the billionaire holds a larger stake than the total shares of Twitter executives.
