Elon Musk’s lawyers are trying to slow down Twitter’s lawsuit
Elon Musk’s legal team has responded to Twitter’s lawsuit against him, saying the company is demanding an unreasonably speedy trial. In response, Musk’s team is asking that the case be heard only next year, according to Bloomberg.
Twitter has pushed for the trial to take place in mid-September, justifying the request to speed things up as the Musk-Twitter merger agreement has a “presumed drop-dead date” of October 24. However, Musk’s team is asking for the trial to be held on February 13, 2023 at the earliest, Bloomberg reports.
Twitter declined to comment on the matter, pointing to the first complaint filed Tuesday.
Twitter sued Musk earlier this week after he officially tried to bail out his $44 billion deal to buy the company. Almost immediately after he said he intended to pull the plug, Twitter chairman Bret Taylor said the company would be Take Musk to Court, and the company filed a lawsuit on Tuesday. Musk had only responded through court on Friday, but Tuesday he tweeted.
Musk’s main claim for wanting to end the merger is that Twitter has not given him the data to “make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on the Twitter platform,” his legal team wrote last week. His team again invoked the collision issue in Friday’s statement. According to The Wall Street Journalthey said that “the core dispute over fake and spam accounts is fundamental to Twitter’s value. It is also extremely fact- and expert-intensive, taking a long time to discover.”
There will be a 90-minute hearing next week on July 19 at 11 a.m. ET to decide when the trial will take place, according to Bloomberg and Reuters.
