The hostile saga between Twitter and Elon Musk is not remotely over yet. Twitter announced it is suing the world’s richest man Elon Musk over his decision to pull out of an agreed $44 billion takeover of the social media platform.
The relationship was already massively acrimonious. It descended into outright hostility last week when Musk terminated his deal and has descended even further this week when Twitter lodged a lawsuit accusing Musk of trashing the company and walking away.
The lawsuit was filed in Delaware, which is the company’s corporate base. The 62-page legal document launches right into a savage assessment of how Musk behaved through the saga.
Twitter said Musk entered a binding agreement to buy Twitter in April and is pulling out because “the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”
“Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, 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,” the scathing legal document’s opening said.
The document lists accusations against Musk of unreasonable demands and inconsistent behavior. Twitter described it as “a model of bad faith.”
It also accused Musk of treating the buy-out process as an “elaborate joke.”
Musk gave three reasons for canceling the deal. First, Twitter breached the agreement by failing to provide enough information about spam accounts. Secondly, Twitter misrepresented the number of spam accounts in its disclosures to watchdogs. And finally, Twitter breached the agreement by failing to consult Musk when firing senior employees.
Twitter spared no length in rebutting these three reasons.
Twitter said it has “bent over backward” to provide Musk the information he demanded and provided lengthy chunks dedicated to the back-and-forth over spam accounts. Twitter said Musk’s requests were “designed to try to tank the deal.”
Twitter then accuses Musk of breaking the agreement in multiple ways.
The buy-out included a contract that Musk not “disparage” the company or its representatives. Twitter was not short on examples of disparaging tweets, including when he sent a poop emoji at the Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.
Experts believe Musk only went through the process in order to conduct a publicity stunt. Other experts say that the stock market decline — especially a decline in Tesla shares — caused Musk’s pull-out.
The next stage is a trial. Twitter asked a Delaware court to schedule a four-day trial in September for the case, with hopes of a quick conclusion before the deal deadline on October 24.
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