Twitter Wins Round 1: Judge Denies Elon Musk’s Motion to Delay Trial

Delaware Court of Chancery Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick ruled in Twitter’s favor on Tuesday granting the company’s request for an expedited trial in the $44 billion legal battle between the social media network and Elon Musk. The trial is set to being in October, while Musk wanted to delay it until 2023.

CNBC reports that Delaware Court of Chancery Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick recently approved Twitter’s motion to expedite its trial against billionaire Elon Musk over his attempt to pull out of a $44 billion deal to purchase the social media network. It was determined that a five-day trial will take place in October.

Twitter’s lawyer, William Savitt of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, argued that Twiter’s request for an expedited trial was in line with timelines for cases of a similar nature in the past. Savitt stated that a quick trial was important as Twitter needed to put a stop to the ongoing harm the company has experienced due to the uncertainty of the deal’s disclosure and alleged disparagement by Musk.

Savitt alleged that attempts by Musk to delay the trial could be a ploy to “run out the clock” by leaving little time for appeals before the debt commitments he made to finance the deal expire.

Musk’s lawyer, Andrew Rossman of Quinn Emanuel, argued that the expedited trial was too aggressive for his team to review the data trove provided by Twitter, which Musk wants to review to verify the number of spam accounts on the platform.

Rossman claimed that Twitter wants to “continue to shroud in secrecy” the number of bots on the platform and failed to provide the information Musk requested earlier. But Savitt argued that determining the percentage of bot accounts on the platform is not necessary in the case as “nothing in the merger agreement turns on that question.”

Read more at CNBC here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan