Twitter Inc sued Elon Musk on Tuesday for violating his $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform and asked a Delaware court to order the world's richest person to complete the merger at the agreed $54.20 per Twitter share, reports Reuters.
"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," said the complaint.
Twitter sues Elon Musk to hold him to $44 billion deal (Reuters)
Excerpt from Reuters: The lawsuit sets in motion what promises to be one of the biggest legal showdowns in Wall Street history, involving one of the business world's most colorful entrepreneurs in a case that will turn on staid contract language. On Friday, Musk said he was terminating the deal because Twitter violated the agreement by failing to respond to requests for information regarding fake or spam accounts on the platform, which is fundamental to its business performance. The lawsuit accused Musk of "a long list" of violations of the merger agreement that "have cast a pall over Twitter and its business." It said for the first time that employee attrition has been "on the upswing" since the deal was announced.
In a related story, also from Reuters, The judge overseeing the lawsuit has a no-nonsense reputation as well as the distinction of being one of the few jurists who has ever ordered a reluctant buyer to close a U.S. corporate merger.
Judge in Twitter v. Musk made rare ruling: ordering a deal to close (Reuters)
Excerpt from Reuters: Kathaleen McCormick took over the role of chancellor or chief judge of the Court of Chancery last year, the first woman in that role. On Wednesday, she was assigned the Twitter lawsuit which seeks to force Musk to complete his deal for the social media platform, which promises to be one of the biggest legal showdowns in years. In contrast to Musk's brash and volatile behavior, she is known as soft-spoken, approachable and amiable -- but a person who also stands her ground. She advocates respect among litigants and integrity at legal conferences.
Musk had claimed that the company withheld information about the number of spam bots, or false accounts, on its platform. Twitter argued that Musk is creating flimsy excuses to walk away from a deal because both his net worth and the value of Twitter have plunged since April, according to The Atlantic.
Elon Musk Is a ‘Nightmare Client’ (The Atlantic)
Excerpt from The Atlantic: Twitter’s lawsuit is an extraordinary and odd document. It paints Musk as a dishonest and unserious hypocrite, the sort of person you would never want running your company. But because this same dishonest and unserious hypocrite has signed a document offering to pay a huge premium to shareholders, Twitter’s board is bound by its fiduciary duty to enforce a merger neither Musk nor Twitter’s employees seem to want. It’s an awfully strange twist to the marriage-plot genre: I hate your guts, now marry me! This is shareholder capitalism as romantic comedy.
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