Twitter has accused Elon Musk of breaking a $44 billion purchase deal in a 62-page lawsuit filed on Tuesday. By citing Twitter’s large number of bogus accounts and accusing the firm of not providing him with adequate information about the problem and misrepresenting itself, Mr. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, has attempted to back out of the deal.
As part of its lawsuit against Mr. Musk, Twitter said that his accusations against it were without substance. According to the corporation, it was Mr. Musk who had broken the deal. “Hypocrisy and ill faith” were among the worst words hurled at him on Twitter. It used a series of tweets from the billionaire to support its claim.
Mr. Musk was in violation of contract, but Twitter was not, and here are some of Twitter’s primary arguments to back up its position:
Contrary to Mr. Musk’s allegations, Twitter said in its complaint that it had given him with information about spam accounts. A number of Mr. Musk’s requests were granted, including access to the company’s so-called “fire hose,” or a massive stream of tweets.
Mr. Musk’s requests for information became more absurd, Twitter said in its complaint.
According to the complaint, “defendants’ information demands were planned from the onset to attempt to wreck the agreement. For example, “Musk is making increasingly outlandish demands that don’t represent a genuine investigation of Twitter’s processes but are part of an effort to build a record of Twitter’s noncooperation in court.”
Tweets from Twitter about the 5 percent of its users who are bots, according to Mr. Musk, have a “material adverse effect,” as defined by the terms of the deal. On Twitter’s terms, Mr. Musk is obligated to ensure that all regulatory filings since January are truthful.
Twitter, on the other hand, pointed out that its regulatory filings had stated that the numbers were estimations. (Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, has explained how the business identifies and combats spam bots.) Twitter also alleged that Mr. Musk wanted to purchase Twitter because of bots.
In addition, Mr. Musk claimed that Twitter’s failure to run its business as expected while the acquisition was closing was another reason for his decision to pull out of the deal. Other than that, Mr. Musk said that Twitter stalled recruiting and did not notify him prior to terminating two executives, which violated the terms of the transaction contract.
Twitter, on the other hand, claimed in its lawsuit that Mr. Musk had told the company that a slowdown in hiring was in keeping with his wishes. “The attorneys voiced no opposition” to our decision to let the two executives go, the corporation said in a statement. The claim does not indicate when Mr. Musk’s legal team was informed of the choices.
When it comes to obtaining the $44 billion acquisition price, Mr. Musk must undertake “reasonable best endeavours” according to his agreement, which includes arranging debt financing.
Tweet said that Mr. Musk seemed to abandon attempts to finish his loan financing, which violated the deal. Furthermore, according to Twitter, he vanished when the company’s top officials, including Ned Segal, chief financial officer, sought out to address Mr. Musk’s concerns about spam accounts.
Along with Mr. Swan, the complaint alleges that Mr. Musk fired other officials who were trying to assist him in closing the purchase. It was said in the lawsuit that, on June 23, Mr. Musk announced on Twitter that “he had requested Swan to quit the transaction procedures, since we are not on the same wavelength,”
Twitter and its employees could not be disparaged in any tweets by Mr. Musk as part of the agreement. Twitter, on the other hand, argued that he repeatedly broke the agreement by doing so.
It was revealed in the complaint that a lawyer from Twitter had notified Mr. Musk he had broken the terms of a nondisclosure agreement, and there were screenshots of some of those tweets submitted in the case. In another, in response to a tweet from Mr. Agrawal, Mr. Musk used a faeces emoji. Twitter also cited Mr. Musk’s public doubts about the integrity of Twitter’s exposes of spam accounts, both on Twitter and at conferences.