Elon Musk must disclose by the end of Friday any legal claims he may have against the firm, a Delaware judge decided, as part of Twitter’s effort to hold him to his $44 billion deal for the social media platform. The trial will last five days and start on October 17, according to Twitter.
Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk has until 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) on Friday to submit any counterclaims, according to the directive signed late Thursday by Delaware Court of Chancery Chancellor Kathleen McCormick. Musk is the world’s richest person.
According to Musk’s legal counsel, he may file counterclaims, which would basically be his own case against Twitter, and allow him to demand monetary compensation for the disputed transaction.
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX announced his decision to terminate the agreement on July 8 and accused Twitter Inc. of violating the merger agreement by exaggerating the number of phony accounts on its platform.
Days later, Twitter filed a lawsuit, claiming that Musk was required by the merger agreement to close the deal at $54.20 per share and that the false account claims were a diversion. The company’s shares increased 1.4 percent to $41.45 in early trade on Friday.
In order to lessen the possible harm to Twitter that the deal’s uncertainty could bring, McCormick accelerated the matter to trial last week.
Twitter has attributed Twitter’s declining revenue and internal commotion to the legal battle.
The trial was set for October 17, but the two parties couldn’t agree on how much access to internal documents and other evidence should be allowed during discovery.
This week, Musk accused Twitter of being slow to respond to his discovery requests, and Twitter countered that he was requesting a ton of information that was unrelated to the case’s central question of whether Musk had broken the terms of the pact.
The top judge seemed to foresee future discovery challenges in her order.
According to McCormick, “This ruling does not resolve any particular discovery arguments, including the appropriateness of any requests for huge data sets.”
Musk will also stand trial for one week starting on October 24 in Wilmington, Delaware. The record-breaking $56 billion compensation plan for Tesla’s CEO is being challenged as corporate waste and unfair enrichment by a stakeholder of the electric vehicle manufacturer.
