Trial Date for Twitter v Elon Musk Revealed
Crypto News

Trial Date for Twitter v Elon Musk Revealed

In an early victory for the tech giant, the Delaware Court of Chancery said a trial must be expedited because of a "cloud of uncertainty" facing the company.

Trial Date for Twitter v Elon Musk Revealed

Зміст

Listen to the CoinMarketRecap podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts

A high-stakes trial between Twitter and Elon Musk will begin in October, a judge has ruled.

The social network is suing the billionaire for attempting to pull out of an agreed $44 billion takeover.

Twitter had wanted a non-jury trial to begin in September, while Musk's legal team was lobbying for the case to be heard next year.

But in an early victory for the tech giant, the Delaware Court of Chancery said a trial must be expedited because of a "cloud of uncertainty" facing the company.

During Tuesday's hearing, Twitter's lawyers accused Musk of "attempted sabotage," adding:

"He's doing his best to run Twitter down."

These allegations attracted short shrift from Musk's attorney Andrew Rossman, who described this theory as "preposterous." It was also pointed out that the world's richest man now has a far larger stake in Twitter than the company's board of directors.

The microblogging site had wanted the trial to last for four days, but head judge Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick — presiding remotely because she's tested for COVID-19 — said it'll last for five days instead.

What Now?

Twitter's goal from this lawsuit is simple: Forcing Elon Musk to buy the company.

While the Delaware Court of Chancery has granted similar requests in the past, it's never done so on a company of this size.

We'll now be going through a discovery process where both sides will have to hand over evidence. Musk will be hoping for concrete information surrounding how many fake users and spam accounts are actually on Twitter.

The entrepreneur has repeatedly argued that the social network underestimates bots, and claims this could have a detrimental effect on advertising revenues.

But Twitter has accused him of "hypocrisy" — not least because Musk had himself said part of his motivation for buying the company was to rid the platform of spam. Instead, the company believes he wants to wriggle out of the deal because his $54.20-a-share offer looks too generous now the markets have fallen.

Given how the trial date is three months away, a lot could change — and it's highly likely that we'll see further inflammatory tweets from Musk in the weeks ahead.

His posts have irritated Twitter executives, who have complained that he's using the company's platform as a "megaphone" for disparaging the site.

8 people liked this article