Twitter gets what it wants, Elon Musk loses his big delay attempt

A court has ruled in favor of Twitter for expediting the trial date for the social media company's lawsuit against Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk moved to terminate his merger agreement with Twitter, and in response, the world's second-largest social media company is taking Musk to court. Twitter filed a lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery that claimed Musk must follow through with the merger agreement at the stated price of $54.20 a share, or $44 billion. Twitter's lawsuit also stated that the court should expedite the trial given its nature and how merger agreements being in limbo can impact the company negatively.

Musk fired back at Twitter with a filing that pushed for the court to reject Twitter's request to expedite the trial date, citing the need for a substantial amount of time to analyze and interpret the treasure trove of user data that Twitter provided Musk's team - to review the company's process for identifying bot/spam accounts. The filing requested that the trial get pushed back to on or after February 13, 2023. That request has now been denied by the Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick.

Twitter gets what it wants and will have a trial date set in October 2022.

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"The reality is delay threatens irreparable harm to the sellers. Those concerns are on full display in the present case. Typically, the longer the merger transaction remains in limbo, the larger the cloud of uncertainty cast over the company and the greater the risk of irreparable harm to the sellers," said McCormick.

The Court of Chancery said it "has acknowledged that whenever a merger is held in 'limbo' by a buyer's refusal to close, the seller is at risk of irreparable injury" and that a fast trial "is essential to ensure sufficient time for this Court to grant effective relief and for the Delaware Supreme Court to review this Court's decision."

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