Twitter wins expedited trial in Musk case

Twitter’s lawsuit seeking to force Elon Musk to complete his $44 billion acquisition of the company will take place in October, a judge ruled Tuesday.

The social media platform’s lawyers argued in Delaware Chancery Court that Twitter is being harmed each day that its dispute with Musk continues without a resolution and asked for a court date in September.

Musk’s lawyers contended that that expedited timeline would not give his team enough time to evaluate the data they’ve been given about the prevalence of fake accounts on the platform.

Delaware Court of Chancery Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick ultimately ruled in Twitter’s favor, setting up a five-day trial for October.

“The longer the merger transaction remains in limbo, the larger a cloud of uncertainty is cast over the company,” she said.

Twitter sued Musk last week after the Tesla CEO said he was walking away from his binding commitment to buy all outstanding shares of the company at $54.20 each.

Musk’s team has said that Twitter had violated the terms of the deal by failing to provide him with sufficient data about spam accounts and by letting two senior executives go after the deal was made.

Twitter countered in its lawsuit that it provided information above and beyond that required by the deal and that Musk had ignored many details about how it calculates fake users.