Enlarge image
Smartphone with Musk photo in front of the Twitter logo: Legal tug of war is likely to continue
Photo: Olivier Douliery / AFP
Elon Musk is initially avoiding a process in the legal dispute with Twitter.
The court case between the short message service and the billionaire was suspended by the responsible judge until October 28th.
If the Tesla boss has not completed the $44 billion takeover of Twitter by then, the parties to the dispute will have to prepare for a trial in November.
Musk had requested the stay of the proceedings and said the banks were working together to secure funding for the deal.
Before that, however, there had been months of back and forth during which Musk actually wanted to withdraw from the deal.
On Tuesday he surprisingly confirmed his original offer for Twitter.
But documents show that mistrust runs deep on Twitter's side and the online service no longer wants to take any risks.
The star entrepreneur and Twitter are still at odds over important details that need to be worked out in order to finalize the deal.
When Musk's lawyers last requested that the proceedings be stopped and the process deleted, Twitter immediately submitted a counter-motion.
This contained clear words.
According to Twitter, Musk has so far kept a back door open to getting out of the deal by making the acquisition dependent on financing.
The company is suspicious and wants to secure the deal first before the legal dispute is completely settled.
Meanwhile, Musk was already on a confrontational course again: "Twitter does not take a yes as an answer," says the court application.
"Amazingly, they insist on continuing the proceedings."
Twitter is thus jeopardizing the deal and jeopardizing the interests of its own shareholders.
The lawyers for the online platform, in turn, made it clear in the counter-motion that Musk no longer trusted him after months of maneuvering to cancel the purchase.
The obstacle isn't that Twitter won't take a "yes" for an answer, but that Musk still refuses to stand by his contractual purchase commitments.
Musk wants to implement a plan that allows him, based on certain reservations, to delay the conclusion of the deal at will and to obtain legal certainty in the event of a failure.
"Trust us, we're really serious this time," Twitter lawyers summarized Musk's side's position in the countermotion.
But this is “an invitation for further mischief and delays”.
They argued that Musk should close the deal by next week at the latest.
Observers saw Twitter at an advantage in court
The star entrepreneur submitted a purchase offer for Twitter in the spring and concluded a takeover agreement with the board of directors of the online service.
Only a few weeks later, however, it became apparent that Musk wanted to get out of the deal – which he officially initiated in July.
As a reason, he accused Twitter of having given incorrect information about the number of fake and automated bot accounts.
Twitter went to court to force Musk to comply with the takeover deal - and observers largely assumed that the online service had the better arguments on its side for the lawsuit.
The trial was scheduled to begin on October 17th.
Now the legal tug of war goes into overtime.
mmq/Reuters/dpa