Twitter has sued Elon Musk over the Tesla CEO’s attempt to pull out of the $44 billion deal he made to buy the social media giant.
In the lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Twitter accuses Musk of refusing “to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests” and seeks to force him to go through with the offer he made in April.
“Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away,” Twitter’s lawsuit states.
Last week Musk attorneys informed Twitter that the billionaire planned to terminate the deal to Twitter alleging that the platform appears to have “made false and misleading representations” — particularly regarding how it handles spam accounts.
“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,’” Musk’s lawyer wrote.
“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,” Musk’s lawyer added.
In response, lawyers for Twitter condemned the “purported termination” in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), calling Musk’s move “invalid and wrongful.”
The filing included a statement from Twitter signaling that the company would take legal action.
“We are committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plan to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” the release stated. “We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”
Musk responded by tweeting out a meme to his 100.8 million followers on the platform showing four photos of him laughing with captions that read: “They said I couldn’t buy Twitter; Then they wouldn’t disclose bot info; Now they want to force me to buy Twitter in court; Now they have to disclose bot info in court.”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2022
Ifunanya Ikueze is an Engineer, Safety Professional, Writer, Investor, Entrepreneur and Educator.
