Twitter and Elon Musk will go on trial in October for the $44 billion takeover transaction, a Delaware judge ordered on Tuesday.
In case you've had the luxury of forgetting, Musk launched a bid to purchase Twitter early this year, and much drama has ensued as a result.
The court's decision on Tuesday was the first in the case that Twitter launched about a month ago in an effort to compel Musk to complete the acquisition of the social media site.
The CEO of Tesla and richest man in the world agreed to purchase Twitter in April, but by July he declared his intention to end the agreement. Musk faces a $1 billion fee if he decides to end the agreement.
According to the New York Times, Musk wanted a February trial in response to Twitter's request for a September trial in order to accelerate the matter.
After an almost two-hour-long hearing, Kathaleen St. J. McCormick, the judge in charge of the lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery, declared that Twitter would be under more 'uncertainty' the longer the merger transaction is in limbo.
According to Twitter, Musk would have more time to 'badger' the firm and find a way out of the agreement the longer the trial lasted.
So in a way, Tuesday's decision is a triumph for Twitter. The October trial will take five days, per McCormick's decision, and the precise date will be chosen based on the court's and the attorneys' schedules.
It is clear that Twitter wants the legal matter to be finished as soon as possible. This continuous ambiguity, according to Twitter's attorney Bill Savitt, hurts Twitter 'every hour of the day.'
According to Musk's attorneys, he needs additional time to analyse 'incredible volumes of data' in order to ascertain if Twitter's estimate that 5% of its users are bots is accurate or not.
Musk stated that he wanted to take Twitter private in order to maximise its potential when he made his offer to purchase the company.
But shortly after making his offer, he began criticising the website and its top executives, complaining about the prevalence of Twitter bots and the removal of particular tweets.
Musk further asserted that Twitter had obstructed his attempts to determine precisely how many accounts on the service were fraudulent, and that he had not received the necessary information.
On its end, Twitter asserted that it had given Musk the details he had requested about the platform's bots, and the company accused Musk of attempting to back out of the agreement in the wake of the recent stock market decline.
Musk stated earlier this month that he intended to end the Twitter agreement for three key reasons. He claimed three breaches of the agreement: first, that Twitter had not disclosed enough information about the bots; second,
The claim that Musk is attempting to harm Twitter is 'preposterous,' according to Musk's attorney Andrew Rossman, because he is Twitter's second-largest shareholder.
Musk is obligated to pay a $1 billion termination fee in the event that the sale is not finalised, and that is about it.
Indictment would be a 'last resort,' according to Robert Miller, a law professor with substantial experience in mergers and acquisitions and associated legislation in Delaware Chancery Court.
According to Miller, the Delaware Chancery Court is 'expressly authorised' to imprison someone for breaking an order rather than 'hold someone in contempt for doing so.' Therefore, even if the judge might not begin by sending Musk to jail, it is a possibility if he disobeys the order frequently.
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