Elon Musk’s drama-filled bid to acquire Twitter keeps taking turns even as it has come under litigation.
On Thursday, a judge rejected Musk’s demands for more user details, describing it as “absurdly broad.” The demand is part of the entrepreneur’s efforts to ascertain the actual number of users on Twitter, an assurance he said he needs to close the $44 billion acquisition deal.
The Tesla CEO has maintained that Twitter is not being honest about the number of bots on its platform, even though the company has provided him with data it said would answer his questions about fake accounts.
Further push by Musk for additional data was rejected. Having described it as “absurdly broad,” Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware’s Court of Chancery said many of Musk’s data demands amount to trillions of data points that “no one in their right mind has ever tried to undertake such an effort.”
According to the judge, Musk has had data and documents needed to pursue his case, with much provided by Twitter before he said he was calling off the deal in July, accusing Twitter of not being truthful.
“My overall impression is that plaintiff has agreed to produce a tremendous amount of information to defendants, and that the information plaintiff has agreed to produce is sufficiently broad to satisfy most of plaintiff’s obligations,” wrote Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware’s Court of Chancery.
In June, Twitter agreed to provide the full firehose of internal data to Musk, as part of its efforts to satisfy the world’s richest man’s demand for additional data on the number of spam accounts the platform holds.
However, court ordered Twitter to turn over data from 9,000 accounts sampled in a fourth-quarter audit, which was carried out to estimate the number of spam or bot users on its platform. McCormick gave the social media company two weeks to produce the data, although it argued that the data is lost and recreating will be difficult.
“We look forward to reviewing the data Twitter has been hiding for many months,” said Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, in an emailed statement to Reuters.
Musk was enthusiastic about purchasing Twitter, making a swift $44 billion acquisition bid for the microblogging app in April. However, the SpaceX CEO made a U-turn in what is believed to be a ploy to secure a cheaper deal.
Musk has said he wants to test that audit’s accuracy because he believes the company fraudulently misrepresented that only 5% of its accounts were spam. He wants McCormick to rule he can walk away from the deal. The deal was agreed at the price of $54.20 per share, below Twitter share price at the time.
Twitter said the spam-based controversy, which has lingered for months, is hurting the company. It has sued Musk to force him to close the deal. Musk on the other hand wants the court to rule that he can walk away from the deal without having to pay the $1 billion breakup feed enshrined in the agreement.
Musk’ attempt to have the trial pushed further into the future was denied by the court. A five-day trial has been scheduled for Oct. 17.
His argument has been that Twitter lied when it said in regulatory filing that spam accounts for only about 5% of the platform’s users.
“Mr. Musk is terminating the Merger Agreement because Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement, and is likely to suffer a Company Material Adverse Effect,” Musk’s lawyers wrote in a letter to Twitter’s Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde.
But Twitter on Wednesday, described Musk’s argument as “legally irrelevant.” The company said it has described the spam count in regulatory filings as an estimate, not a representation, adding that the real level of spam could be higher.
