Judge agrees to grant Twitter expedited trial against Elon Musk 

Twitter took first blood over Elon Musk after a judge in Delaware agreed to fast track Twitter’s lawsuit against him over his proposed $44BN purchase of the company.

When giving reasoning the judge cited a “cloud of uncertainty” over Twitter after Elon Musk backed out of the deal to buy it. Musk’s legal team had asked for the case to be held next year due to its complicated nature.

Twitter initially sought a four-day trial in September to ensure that Musk would “honor his obligations” to buy the company Judge Kathaleen McCormick granted Twitter a five-day trial, which will commence in October.

Musk has accused Twitter of failing to report the true number of “bot” accounts on their site and for failing to provide enough information to close the deal. As a result of this, Musk’s lawyers requested a February 2023 hearing to allow them to sift through Twitter’s “firehouse” data.

Musk’s lawyer Andrew Rossman said more time is required as this is “one of the largest take-private deals in history” involving a “company that has a massive amount of data that has to be analyzed. Billions of actions on their platform have to be analyzed.”

William Savitt, who is representing Twitter, hit out at Elon Musk. “It’s attempted sabotage. He’s doing his best to run Twitter down.”

Savitt has also said that Musk’s real reasons for wanting to back out of the deal is that he agreed to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share, the market took a tumble soon after the deal is done. Savitt also questioned “whether the real plan is to run out the clock.” Savitt added, “He’s banking on wriggling out of the deal he signed.”

Twitter’s share price was 3.65% higher at $39.79 on Tuesday afternoon, whilst Tesla shares increased by 0.95% to $728.47.