Elon Musk It has been the first disappointment in the legal battle that it has with the direction of Twitter for the purchase of the company. In the preview to decide the date on which it will start the trial for the complaint that Twitter has filed against Musk for withdrawing his purchase offer from the social network and seeking to force him to buy the company as stipulated in the agreement, his request to delay the trial until 2023 has been rejected. It will be finally in Octobera little later than Twitter, which has accused Musk of trying to delay the trial to harm the company, wanted.
It is a first victory for Twitter, which, according to the Wall Street Journal, asked for the trial to be held as soon as possible. During oral arguments presented before the Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, Kathleen McCormickthe social network has alleged that Musk’s bot arguments were attempts by him, in bad faith, to withdraw from the agreement due to what they have described as “an acute case of buyer’s remorse«.
Twitter wanted to hold the trial in September and Musk asked for it to be in February. It will finally be in October, and it will last five days. More than Twitter asked for, but less than Elon Musk wanted. A specific day of the month for its start has not yet been set.
Twitter’s lawyers also noted at the hearing that Elon Musk’s conduct was inexcusable, noting that he has also put an employee retention plan on hold and embarked on a phase of “unnecessary value destruction«.
For their part, Musk’s lawyers have suggested that Twitter is misleading Musk with data about the bots. Both parties, yes, have agreed that their team has made millions of queries to Twitter’s data stream in real time. But Musk’s lawyers have also complained that the New York Times had a copy of the lawsuit filed against their client before they did.
After the arguments and a brief recess, McCormick decided that a delay in the trial date would do irreparable damage to Twitter, and that although October is an early date for the trial, the chancellor indicated that she was confident that both teams of lawyers would be up to the task of holding it. The chancellor argued her decision based on the fact that «Typically, the longer a purchase transaction is in limbo, the greater the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over the company, and so is the risk that sellers will suffer irreparable harm.«.
