Elon Musk submits a court filing accusing Twitter of trying to rush the trial

After many threats, Twitter finally sued Elon Musk for backing out of the $44 billion deal on Tuesday. The entrepreneur and CEO responded by submitting a court filing on Friday that said that a quick trial is unreasonable. 

An unjustifiable request

“This Court should reject Plaintiff Twitter, Inc.’s (“Twitter”) unjustifiable request to rush this $44 billion merger case to trial in just two months. Twitter’s bid for extreme expedition rests on the false premise that the Termination Date in the merger agreement (“Agreement”) is October 24, glossing over that this date is automatically stayed if either party files litigation. By filing its complaint, Plaintiff has rendered its supposed need for a September trial moot,” stated the filing.

Twitter is suing Musk to force him to go forward with his acquisition of the company. However, Musk has argued that he is entitled to drop the deal because the company hasn’t given him enough information to figure out if its estimates about the number of spam bots on the platform are accurate. 

Musk’s filing mentions a May 6 meeting he had with Twitter’s chief executive officer and chief financial officer where they reviewed how the company estimates how many bots are on the platform. Musk complained that the process was based on human reviewers looking at a small percentage of accounts and was much less thorough than he had expected.

But that’s not all. 

A previous SEC filing

In a previous SEC filing, Musk’s lawyers said Twitter furthermore did not respond to multiple requests made by the entrepreneur demanding information crucial to the platform’s development.

“For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to “make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform” (our letter to you dated May 25, 2022 (the “May 25 Letter”). This information is fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance and is necessary to consummate the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement because it is needed to ensure Twitter’s satisfaction with the conditions to closing, to facilitate Mr. Musk’s financing and financial planning for the transaction, and to engage in transition planning for the business,” said the filing. 

“Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information. Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information.”

Twitter, on the other hand, claims that Musk wasn’t genuinely interested in finding out about bots but rather sent a series of escalating requests that the firm could not meet. The court will now hold a hearing Tuesday to address Twitter’s request for an expedited trial.