A legal filing made public on Wednesday revealed that Elon Musk and Twitter’s trial would proceed on Monday, October 17, 2022.
Earlier this week, Elon Musk decided to move forward with his $44 billion Twitter acquisition. Despite his decision, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Chancery Court wrote in a recent legal filing that neither Elon Musk nor Twitter has filed for a stay with the court. So, McCormick expects the trial to proceed as scheduled.
Twitter released a statement shortly after Musk filed to continue his $44 billion deal with the social media company. Twitter hinted that it would move forward with the agreement.
“We received the letter from the Musk parties which they have filed with the SEC. The intention of the Company is to close the transaction at $54.20 per share,” tweeted Twitter Investor Relations.
Why Elon Musk acquire Twitter (again)
Twitter’s legal team is scheduled to depose Elon Musk on Thursday, October 6, in Texas. Since the trial seems to be moving forward as expected, Musk’s deposition will likely push through unless the two parties can settle their disagreement beforehand.
In court, Musk’s camp has argued that the billionaire decided to terminate his $44 billion deal with the social media company due to the indefinite amount of bot and spam accounts on Twitter. Twitter’s lawyers have been trying to prove that Musk’s concerns about bot and spam accounts are all pretext so he can terminate the deal. Twitter requested a search through Musk’s texts during “the relevant period” for “material” related to its lawsuit against the SpaceX CEO.
Accelerate CEO Julian Klymochko told Benzinga that texts from Musk would have weakened the Tesla CEO’s case against Twitter. In one text Musk wrote: “Putin’s speech tomorrow is really important. It won’t make sense to buy Twitter if we’re heading into World War 3.”
Musk claimed that he did not have any communication regarding his Twitter takeover besides on April 25 with venture capitalist Marc Andreesen. Musk’s lawyers could not produce text messages from the billionaire between May 24-May 30 and June 1-June 7, reported WSJ.
“These periods were important to the parties’ dispute, and I share [the] plaintiff’s concern that Musk produced no responsive text messages from these periods.”
Chancellor McCormick has shown some concern over Musk’s text messages and their preservation for the trial.
“I am forced to conclude that it is likely that defendants’ custodians permitted the automatic deletion of responsive Signal communications between them and possibly others, and that those communications are irretrievably lost,” McCormick said. “If defendants deleted documents after they were under a duty to preserve, some remedy is appropriate, but the appropriate remedy is unclear to me at this stage.”
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