Twitter sues Elon Musk to force him to complete the purchase of the social network

By Matt O'Brien

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twitter announced Tuesday that it has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk to force him to complete his $44 billion acquisition of the company that he agreed to in April.

Musk and Twitter have been bracing for a legal dispute since the businessman signaled last Friday that he was backing out of his deal to acquire the social network.

Twitter's lawsuit begins with harsh accusations that "Musk is refusing to fulfill his obligations to Twitter and its shareholders because the signed agreement no longer serves his personal interests."

Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference & Exposition on March 9, 2020, in Washington.Susan Walsh/AP

“After putting on a public show to get Twitter involved, and having proposed and subsequently signed a vendor-friendly merger agreement, Musk apparently thinks that he, unlike any other party subject to Delaware contract laws, is free to change his mind, dirty the company, disrupt its operations, destroy shareholder value, and back down,” the lawsuit states.

Twitter filed its lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery, which typically handles business disputes between the many corporations that are incorporated in the state, such as Twitter.

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Musk said on Friday that Twitter had not provided enough information about the number of fake accounts on the platform.

Twitter indicated last month that it would make available to the businessman raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets.

For years, the company has said in regulatory filings that it believes about 5% of accounts on the platform are fake.

Musk also points out that Twitter violated the acquisition agreement when it fired two members of senior management and a third of the recruiting team.

When Musk offered to buy the company in mid-April, the board of directors initially tried to block him through a financial maneuver that would have made the acquisition extremely expensive.

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However, by April 25 the company had reconsidered the offer, concluding that selling the company to Musk at a price of $54.20 per share was in the best interest of shareholders.

In a joint statement,

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But his confidence did not last long.

Shares of Tesla, Musk's main source of wealth, tumbled amid a broad-based stock market crash in May, and Musk was much less enthusiastic about buying Twitter soon after.