Delaware Court Justice Kathaleen McCormick ruled in Twitter’s favor on Tuesday, asking for an expedited trial to force Elon Musk to buy the company for $44 billion. The five-day trial will take place in October.
At the hearing, Twitter’s attorney, Bill Savitt of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, argued that Twitter’s request for a trial in September is in line with the timing of similar cases in the past. He added that a quick trial timeline is a priority to stop Twitter from continuing damage from uncertainty over the deal closing and Musk’s alleged disparagement.
Savitt also said Musk, who also serves as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, may have tried to delay the trial “intentionally,” leaving little time to appeal before his debt commitments to fund the deal expires.
Musk’s lawyer, Andrew Rossman of Quinn Emanuel’s firm, believes the accelerated schedule is too aggressive for his team to review Twitter’s vast database. Musk hopes to verify the proportion of spam accounts on the platform.
Rossman accused Twitter of wanting to “continue to keep this number private” and failing to provide information that Musk had previously requested from the company. But Savitt said determining the proportion of spam accounts was unnecessary in this case because “there is nothing in the merger agreement that addresses this issue”.
In July, Musk sent a letter to Twitter’s chief legal officer, Vijaya Gadde, through his lawyers, explaining why the billionaire didn’t think his acquisition should go ahead. The lawyers said Twitter underreported the number of spam and fraudulent accounts on its messaging service and failed to send Musk information that could help executives better calculate those statistics.
Twitter later sued Musk and some of his colleagues in mid-July, accusing the billionaire of “refusing to meet his obligations to Twitter and its shareholders because the deals he signed were no longer in his personal interest.”
At the time, Twitter was seeking to start a four-day trial in September.
However, Musk and his lawyers later asked the court to deny Twitter’s request for a fast-track trial. Instead, the billionaire and his lawyers want the court trial to take place next year, according to a court filing in which he alleges Twitter launched “after two months of delay and confusion, a sudden request for an expedited one.”
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