Judge sets trial date for Twitter's case against Elon Musk

Britta Pedersen/Pool via AP, File

An official court date has been set for Twitter’s case against Tesla CEO Elon Musk in October.

As previously detailed by Rebel News, Twitter is attempting to force the world’s richest man to buy the platform after he attempted to terminate his agreement with the social media platform to acquire it.

Musk announced his termination of the deal, which is worth $44 billion, arguing that Twitter was not forthcoming in its reporting of the platform’s real active users in contrast to the fake and bot accounts that proliferate the platform.

Twitter, Musk argued, failed to disclose accurate information his team requested.

On Tuesday, Delaware Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen McCormick ruled that a five-day trial has been set for Twitter to take Musk to court in its case against the billionaire.

“The reality is that delay threatens irreparable harm to the seller, Twitter, for the reasons I described earlier: The longer the delay, the greater the risk,” the judge ruled, Yahoo! Finance reported.

“Given this reality I think a schedule closer to the norm is in order. For this reason, I think we should go to trial in October of this year,” the judge added.

Musk’s request for accurate data regarding fake accounts on the platform was made very early on in his efforts to purchase the company. The letter sent through his attorneys, dated July 8, claims that Musk was never provided with the information and demanded the termination of the agreement by the platform.

“Mr. Musk and his financial advisors at Morgan Stanley have been requesting critical information from Twitter as far back as May 9, 2022 — and repeatedly since then — on the relationship between Twitter’s disclosed mDAU figures and the prevalence of false or spam accounts on the platform,” wrote Musk’s lawyers, “Notwithstanding these repeated requests over the past two months, Twitter has still failed to provide much of the data and information responsive to Mr. Musk’s repeated requests.”

On July 12, Twitter sued Musk to compel him to go through with the purchase.

“Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests,” Twitter’s lawsuit claims. “Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away.”

Musk maintains that his decision to purchase the social media company is based on his desire to protect freedom of speech.

“It’s important to the function of democracy, it’s important to the function of the United States as a free country and many other countries, and to help freedom in the world more broadly than in the U.S.,” said Musk during his initial effort to buy Twitter. “Civilizational risk is decreased the more we can increase the trust of Twitter as a public platform, and so I do think this will be somewhat painful.”