BREAKING NEWS: No-nonsense Delaware judge will hear Twitter’s case against Elon Musk NEXT WEEK and will then decide on whether to expedite trial to September
- District Judge Kathaleen McCormick has set a 90-minute hearing for the case in Delaware next week
- Twitter are requesting to fast-track a trial for its lawsuit against Tesla CEO Elon Musk
- The social media giant is seeking to hold Musk, the world’s richest person, to his $44 billion deal
- They claim the trial could be over in four days, but legal experts predict the case will take two weeks
A no-nonsense judge will next week hear Twitter’s request to fast-track a trial in its lawsuit against billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
District Judge Kathaleen McCormick, the chancellor of Delaware’s Court of Chancery, has set a 90-minute hearing beginning July 19 at 11am in Wilmington.
Twitter has requested a four day trial in September to force Musk to go through with his original $44 billion bid to buy the firm, which he announced he was no longer pursuing last Friday.
The firm’s lawyers say they need just four days to prove that he should be forced to honor his agreement. McCormick has a reputation for being a no-nonsense judge who does not take prisoners, but has also been hailed for the fairness of her courtroom.
Twitter hopes to start the non-jury trial on September 19, but legal experts have predicted the case will take two weeks to try.
It is seeking a court judgement to force Musk to buy the company at $54.20 per share, as he agreed in the April 25 merger deal.
Alex Spiro, one of Musk’s lawyers in the case, didn’t immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
The Tesla CEO backed out of the $44billion buyout, with the social media giant launching a lawsuit in an attempt to get him to honor his offer
Judge Kathaleen McCormick, the first female chancellor in the Delaware Chancery Court’s 229-year history, has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday next week at 11am to hear arguments in Delaware for a fast-tracked trial
Last week, Musk said he was terminating the buyout deal over concerns about bots and fake accounts.
He responded to the lawsuit with a tweet explaining that his use of the colorful emoji was shorthand for ‘BS’, a common abbreviation for ‘bulls**t.’
Twitter’s legal complaint includes the tweet from the billionaire containing the poop emoji.
The lawsuit filed on Tuesday cites Musk’s May 16 tweet, among others, as evidence that he publicly disparaged Twitter, in violation of the merger agreement, before he backed out of the deal entirely.
Musk’s tweet with the smiling poop emoji came in response to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who had sent several tweets explaining the company’s procedures to combat spam and fake accounts, a battle Agrawal described as ‘dynamic.’
In another tweet on May 17, Musk appeared to encourage the SEC to investigate the accuracy of Twitter’s public disclosures.
His online posts are being presented as evidence he has been pursuing the takeover in ‘bad faith’.
But the crux of Twitter’s argument is that the world’s richest man is bound by the deal to buy the company he signed on April 25.
The lawsuit states that the deal does not include a contingency requiring Musk to secure financing.
It adds that the billionaire waived the customary right to due diligence, which refers to the type of investigation into business fundamentals that he later pursued regarding fake accounts.
Twitter stock jumped nearly 8 percent on Wednesday, to $36.75, in a sign that investors view the company’s lawsuit as likely to succeed in some capacity.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note obtained by DailyMail.com that ‘many investors spent last night reading the case and ultimately concluded that this Game of Thrones battle in court will result in some version of a Twitter win.’
He wrote: ‘This will be a fierce battle in court with the fake account/bot issue front and center, but ultimately Twitter’s Board is holding Musk’s feet to the fire to finish the deal at the agreed upon price.’
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal sent several tweets explaining how the company combats spam and fake accounts in an online battle with Musk
Twitter’s lawsuit includes a screenshot of the billionaire responding to its CEO with the poop emoji, saying it’s evidence he disparaged the company in violation of the buyout deal
Musk responded to the lawsuit with a tweet explaining that his use of the colorful emoji was shorthand for ‘BS’
The lawsuit states that Musk ‘refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests’.
Twitter’s lawyers said the company was given little time to comply with Musk’s demands for information on fake accounts, and argued that they suspected he was trying to use the data to form a competitor.
It states: ‘Steadfast in its commitment to consummate the merger, Twitter continued to try to get Musk’s team what it demanded while safeguarding its customers’ data and harboring very real concerns about how Musk might use the data if he succeeded in escaping the deal.
‘Twitter has bent over backwards to provide Musk the information he has requested, including, most notably, the full ‘firehose’ data set that he has been mining for weeks — and has been continuing to mine since purporting to terminate — with the assistance of undisclosed data reviewers,’
Lawyers for the social media giant argued that if the company continued to bow to Musk’s demands, it would ‘expose Twitter to competitive harm.’
They added that despite saying he would back away from the deal, Musk has allegedly continued to mine Twitter’s confidential data.
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