Elon Musk was ordered to turn over information on potential investors in the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter Inc. he is seeking to cancel, in a bid to win the social media company suing to close the deal.
Delaware Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick on Tuesday dismissed the billionaire’s request to Twitter to hand over information on parties that could raise more than $7 billion in $54.20 objection. A-share acquisition.
McCormick also agreed to Twitter’s request that Musk identify people “with knowledge of or involvement in key issues and events” in the transaction in response to protests from Musk’s lawyers.
Both parties are preparing for the Oct. 17 trial, issuing numerous subpoenas to equity investors, advisors and banks involved in the proposed acquisition. On Monday, Musk subpoenaed Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and his longtime friend. More recently, Musk’s lawyers complained that Twitter was casting too wide a net in going after the names of people Musk had spoken to about the deal.
Bots and whistleblowers
Tuesday’s ruling comes as Twitter faces legal and political danger after a whistleblower brought allegations against Twitter. Mishandling security and privacy concerns, failing to deal with spam and bot accounts on its platform. Musk has put the robotics issue at the heart of his argument for cancelling the acquisition.
Eric Herman, a spokesman for Musk’s lawyers, declined to comment on McCormick’s ruling. A Twitter spokesman also declined to comment.
In her ruling, McCormick noted that Musk’s legal team had agreed to search only the accounts responsible for evaluating bots and spam, compared to Twitter’s search of the records of 42 custodians. The imbalance negates the defense’s argument that compiling a list of all possible investors is too burdensome, the judge said.
is specific,” she wrote. Musk’s side, she found, was not.
‘Rang Hollow’
Musk complained this month that Twitter officials had been going after him for his casual conversations. d discussed the Twitter deal with friends and colleagues. He asked McCormick to hold the platform’s lawyers back. Instead, the judge Found his arguments “sounding hollow” and ordered him to come up with as many names as possible.
McCormick said it was hard to come to the conclusion that forcing Musk to list “knowledgeable” people”, even if these people have duplicate knowledge, it doesn’t fit the needs of any case, especially one involving a $44 billion merger.”
But in the footnote, she says Musk has no obligation If he does not know the names of third-party advisors, he will show their names.
“If he does, then he must,” the judge added.
On other issues, McCormick ruled in Musk’s favor. She rejected Twitter’s request that Musk dropped objections to multiple information queries “by employing an obscure discovery strategy.” She denied Twitter’s request for the defense to turn over any communications with government authorities about the merger was premature.
It was unclear how the ruling might affect a hearing on Musk’s request for information scheduled for Wednesday.
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