Twitter 1 – Elon Musk 0
You will surely remember that last week we told you that Twitter and Elon Musk would have their first meeting, within the lawsuit filed by the social network against the billionaire, this week, more specifically today, on July 19. It was, as we already told you, a hearing in which Judge Kathaleen McCormick would listen to the requests of both parties regarding both the date and the duration of the process. This hearing has already taken place, and we can categorically state that Elon Musk is off to a bad start.
The requests of both parties in these respects differed substantially, Twitter wanted the trial to take place next September and for its duration to be four days, compared to Musk’s request, which requested that the trial be held in February. next year and that it should last for ten days. In summary, Twitter wants a speedy trial and ASAP, Elon Musk wants more time, both ways.
Twitter has argued, for the trial to take place as soon as possible, that its current situation as a listed company is tremendously unstable. The movements by Elon Musk would have caused a substantial loss in the value of its shares, and the board of the social network considers that prolonging this situation for several months can be tremendously damaging to the company. And, with regard to its duration, everything indicates that they intend to enforce the terms of the agreement signed between both parties, without taking into account additional considerations, such as those adduced by Musk to back out of the purchase.
“Millions of Twitter shares are traded daily under a cloud of doubt created by Musk”, affirms Twitter in the presented documentation. “No public company of this size has had to endure these uncertainties”.
We can also read the following in it: “In his press release announcing the deal on April 25, 2022, Musk made a wake-up call to ‘kill the bots’. But when the market declined and the fixed price deal became less attractive, Musk changed his narrative, suddenly demanding a ‘verification’ that spam was not a serious problem on Twitter’s platform and citing a compelling need to carry out an ‘errand’ which he had expressly waived”.
On the other hand, the defense of the position of Elon Musk claims to need more time to collect the necessary information in order, according to them, to be able to prove that the numbers provided by Twitter regarding the number of bots present on the platform is greater than that indicated by the social network at the time of signing the purchase transaction. Something that also explains that their wishes went through a longer trial, in order to expose all the evidence they hoped to have collected at the beginning of next year.
Musk’s defense has also argued that it makes no sense to think that the billionaire intends to cause the share price to fall, since he is currently the company’s second largest shareholder. Playing against this argument, however, is the fact that he has publicly used his Twitter account to urge the SEC to investigate the company.
The judge has not opted for the approaches of any of the parties, although her decision in this regard is much closer to Twitter’s postulate than to that of Elon Musk, since the trial will finally take place in October and will last five days. Quite a setback for Musk, since he will not have the time he considered necessary to complete his investigation and, what is even worse, it gives a sign that, at least on this point, the judge is more aligned with Twitter’s theses than with theirs.
October will therefore be a very intense month for both Twitter and Elon Musk, who despite having started off on the wrong foot, still has room to get out of the purchase contract without this entailing a huge economic setback. Not much room, yes, both the laws of the state of Delaware and the judge’s record, added to the decision made today by it, should push the billionaire to prepare, just in case, for the worst.
With information from TechCrunch
