Elon Musk was recently sued by Twitter after announcing the termination of his acquisition for $44 billion. The billionaire claimed that the social network failed to make provisions for various requirements for the merger agreement. In a response to the lawsuit, Musk’s legal team has asked that the case be not heard until next year. According to a Bloomberg report, the legal team says that Twitter is demanding an unreasonably fast trial.
Given that Musk and Twitter’s merger agreement has an October 24th “presumptive drop-dead date,” Twitter pushed for the trial to happen earlier in mid-September. However, Musk’s team thinks otherwise, the team has requested that the earliest trial date be February 13th, 2023.
News of the Twitter lawsuit broke earlier in the week, and it was due to no reason other than Musk’s wish to officially bail out on his initial agreement to buy the company. Nearly immediately after Musk’s intention of pulling the plug was registered, Twitter board chairman Bret Taylor said the company would be taking Musk to court, the lawsuit was filed immediately on Tuesday. Musk didn’t respond to the lawsuit until Friday. For now, Twitter has declined to comment on Musk’s request for a trial date of February 13th, 2023, Twitter has referred to its initial complaint filed Tuesday.
According to Musk’s legal team, the primary reason for wanting to abandon the merger talks is that Twitter made no provision for data that will help “‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform.” However, the legal team again invoked the bots issue in Friday’s filing, noting “the core dispute over false and spam accounts is fundamental to Twitter’s value. It is also extremely fast and expert intensive, requiring substantial time for discovery.”
According to a Reuters report, a 90-minute hearing has been scheduled for next week, July 19th at 11 AM ET where the date for the trial will be decided.
