Delaware Court of Chancery Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick ruled in favor of Twitter Inc (NYSE: TWTR) on Tuesday for an expedited trial to force Elon Musk to complete his $44 billion acquisition of the company.
Twitter’s lawyer, Bill Savitt of the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, during the hearing, argued that the social media company’s request for a September trial was well in line with the timelines for similar cases in the past, to which the court said the five-day trial will take place in October.
Savitt added that an expedited trial schedule is imperative to stop the ongoing harm that Twitter has faced from the uncertainty from the termination of the acquisition deal and alleged disparagement by Musk.
He also alleged the billionaire attempted to delay the trial to “run out the clock” by leaving little time for appeals before the debt commitments, which Musk made to finance the deal, expire.
The lawyer for Tesla Inc’s (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Musk, Andrew Rossman of the law firm Quinn Emanuel, argued the expedited timeline was too aggressive for his team to review the massive data trove at Twitter, which Musk wants to study to verify the percentage of spam accounts on the platform.
Rossman counter-charged that Twitter wants “to continue to shroud in secrecy” that number and failed to provide the information when Musk asked earlier.
However, Savitt said that determining the percentage of spam accounts is unnecessary in this case since “nothing in the merger agreement turns on that question.”
In July, Musk sent a letter to Twitter’s chief legal officer, Vijaya Gadde, asking for an explanation why the billionaire believed his acquisition should no longer proceed.
Twitter later sued Musk mid-July over allegations that the billionaire “refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”
Musk and his attorneys, however, later asked the court to deny Twitter’s request for an expedited trial alleging that Twitter initiated a “sudden request for warp speed after two months of foot-dragging and obfuscation.”
Picture Credit: Forbes
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