Twitter will face Elon Musk from October 17, but that will not be the last day where a decision is defined regarding the deal for 44,000 million dollars that is at stake. Nor the first.
Since July 19, Kathaleen McCormick, chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, set a first hearing between both parties, while in recent days there have been several controversies on the way to this trial.
One of the latest news is that Elon Musk’s review of Twitter accounts by advisers to the Tesla businessman is unsupported, according to a statement made by Twitter’s lawyer.
“None of these analyses, as far as we can tell, remotely support what Mr. Musk told Twitter and told the world in the termination letter,” attorney Bradley Wilson said.
This is because on July 8, Musk said that the number of bots on the social platform was “tremendously higher” and that the company had misled him, allowing him to withdraw from the agreement without penalty.
Why will Elon Musk and Twitter go to trial?
In July, Musk alleged that the social media company had not fulfilled its contractual obligations, according to a statement filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, for which he had reconsidered the transaction and preferred to cancel the purchase agreement.
The businessman’s agreement with Twitter included a provision according to which, if he failed, he would have to pay 1,000 million dollars, in addition to having legal action, something that the social network pushed.
For this reason, both parties will meet from October 17 to 21 in Delaware. Notably, though, McCormick ruled that Musk’s countersuit against Twitter could be expanded to include accusations from whistleblower Peiter Zatko, a former head of security at Twitter. Zatko stated that the company was “grossly negligent in several areas of information security.”
What is Musk like during trials?
“I would compare it to trying to grab a tiger by the tail,” James Morsch, a corporate lawyer, told Reuters when asked in an interview.
This is because during the lawyers’ question sessions with Musk, he has dedicated himself to insulting and questioning what the lawyers did and said, both at trial and in his personal life.
As background, in 2019 in a trial with Solar City Musk refused to answer questions five times, arguing “we can look at each other until you reformulate it” and going around the bush during the litigation.
