Twitter dispute: Elon Musk can avoid court visits for the time being

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Entrepreneur Musk: Fatty buying interest for Twitter

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BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/ AFP

After the back and forth about the takeover of Twitter by Tesla boss Elon Musk, he apparently does not have to go to court for the time being.

Both parties have agreed to postpone the billionaire's hearing scheduled for Thursday before the start of the trial, the Reuters news agency and the Delaware Online portal report.

Musk announced on Tuesday that he wanted to go through with the purchase of the social media company as agreed on April 25.

At that time, the boss of the electric car manufacturer Tesla had signed a binding purchase contract from which there was hardly any legal way out.

Nevertheless, Musk declared the contract void in July - because Twitter allegedly cheated him.

He claimed there were far more accounts on the platform that weren't made up of real people than Twitter publicly admits.

Musk and Twitter then sued each other.

The court process in the state of Delaware would have started on October 17th.

Musk was heading for a legal embarrassment.

Even the experts he commissioned to estimate the true number of bot accounts came to the conclusion that Musk's claim was not true.

Instead, last Thursday the Chancery Court released a spate of text messages between Musk and his billionaire friends, financiers, would-be business partners and Twitter reps.

On March 30, 2022, for example, Springer boss Mathias Döpfner asked Musk via SMS: "Why don't you buy Twitter?"

And immediately suggested another deal: »We'll manage it for you.

And set up a veritable platform for freedom of expression.” That would be a “real contribution to democracy,” Döpfner rejoices.

"Interesting idea," Musk replied.

Now the embarrassing process will probably no longer happen.

Both sides would settle their dispute and want to complete the $ 44 billion deal, it said.

Unless the billionaire changes his mind again.

ssu/Reuters