Twitter has gained a small victory over Tesla CEO Elon Musk after a judge ruled on Tuesday that the social media company's lawsuit against the world's richest man over the $44 billion acquisition agreement should go to a five-day trial in October.
The judge's decision came at the end of the first hearing in the case over whether or not to expedite the proceedings of the case. The company filed the lawsuit last week, only days after Musk moved to terminate the massive, controversial deal.
Twitter vs. Elon Musk Lawsuit
At the time, Twitter filed a motion to expedite the proceedings and requested a four-day trial in September, an attempt that Musk's legal team opposed. The hearing on Tuesday featured sharply worded arguments from both sides, including the social media company's lawyer at one point referring to the SpaceX CEO as a "committed enemy."
The social media company's lead counsel, William Savitt, came out swinging against Musk at the start of the hearing as he argued in favor of a speedy trial. The legal expert said the continued uncertainty hanging over the company from the outstanding deal and litigation "inflicts harm on Twitter every day, every hour, and every day," as per CNN.
Savitt argued that Musk has been, and continues to be, contractually obligated to use his best efforts to close the massive deal. However, he argued that what the world's richest man was actually doing was the exact opposite, which he referred to as sabotage.
On the other hand, a lawyer for Musk, Andrew Rossman, pushed back by saying that his client does not have an incentive to keep it hanging for a long time. He noted that the billionaire remains to be one of Twitter's largest shareholders.
According to CNBC, Savitt also alleged that Musk's team is attempting to delay the trial in a ploy to "run out the clock" by leaving little time for appeals before his debt commitments to finance the deal expire. Rossman argued back that the expedited timeline was far too aggressive for his team to review the massive trove on Twitter.
Massive $44 Billion Deal
While Rossman pushed the claim that Twitter wants to hide the number of spam accounts on the platform, Savitt said that determining that percentage was unnecessary in the case. He noted that "nothing in the merger agreement turns on that question."
Musk, via his attorneys, sent a letter to Twitter's chief legal officer, Vijaya Gadde, in July, explaining why the billionaire believed his acquisition should no longer proceed. The lawyers claimed that the social media company underreported the number of spam and fraud accounts on its messaging service and failed to send Musk information that could presumably help the executive better calculate those statistics.
On the other hand, Twitter sued Musk and some of his associates in mid-July over allegations that the billionaire "refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests."
Boston College Law School professor Brian Quinn talked about the issue and said he believes Twitter made a solid case for an expedited trial. He argued that Twitter was merely tasked with showing a "colorable claim" that Musk breached the merger agreement and that it would likely suffer "irreparable injury" if it were denied an expedited trial, Yahoo Finance reported.
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