ELON Musk and Twitter executives have had their showdown in court officially scheduled.
Twitter launched a lawsuit against Musk when he reneged on his $44billion dollar bid to buy the company.
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Twitter will face off against the world’s richest man in the Delaware Chancery Court starting on October 17th and continuing for five days.
Lawyers for Twitter had requested to begin the trial as early as September to prevent Musk from further disparaging the company.
Musk had haggled the court for a February 2023 start date, claiming a “warp speed” trial is an attempt to derail his argument the platform is cluttered with spambots.
McCormick has notched the first win for the company by setting a Twitter-friendly calendar.
The Washington Post quoted Kathaleen McCormick, the judge set to hear the case, saying “The reality is the delay [requested by Musk] threatens irreparable harm to the sellers and to Twitter,” during a hearing on Tuesday.
Twitter’s stock value had dropped as low as $32 a share while Musk berated the company after the acquisition was accepted at $54.20 a share.
Last year, McCormick forced the closure of an acquisition where the bidding party tried to pull the plug on the deal.
This past ruling, plus the expedited timeline, is a very bad sign for Musk.
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Musk’s legal team is going to have to look hard for a solution that does not have a nine- or 10-digit price tag on it.
The acquisition documents included a $1billion dollar termination clause.
Twitter intends to hold Musk to the agreed upon $44billion dollar price point, and if even Musk is able to renegotiate the price point he’ll still owe tens of billions of dollars.
Not to mention the fact he’ll be saddled with managing Twitter, its 200million monthly users, and the blowback from his anti-moderation policies.
Twitter’s lead attorney Bill Savitt did not hold back from criticizing Musk during Tuesday’s hearing.
“Mr. Musk has made it very clear: He doesn’t intend to keep any of his promises.”
