Negotiations in the Twitter trial against Musk begin in October

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the essentials in brief

• Negotiations against Musk over the failed Twitter takeover will begin in the fall.
• Musk accuses Twitter of reporting too few fake accounts.

The responsible judge granted Twitter’s request for a quick start to the hearing on Tuesday at a first hearing. The company wants to take legal action to force Musk to complete the contractually agreed purchase.

The founder of Tesla had the planned takeover for a price of 44 billion dollars burst. This is because of allegedly “false and misleading” information from the short message service. In particular, he accuses Twitter of having too few spam or fake accounts on the platform.

Twitter described this justification as “hypocrisy”. The problem was “fictitious to complicate things and cause delays,” said Twitter attorney William Savitt. In the takeover agreement between Twitter and Musk, the topic of spam and fake accounts is “not even mentioned”. He called for negotiations to start in September and referred to the risk of damage to the company.

Analyzing «mountains of data»

Musk’s lawyers, on the other hand, stated that “mountains of data” would first have to be analyzed in order to prove Musk’s claims. The negotiations should therefore not start before February. With the hearing beginning in October, the judge is now much closer to Twitter’s claim.

Observers consider a judicial defeat of Musk and thus a forced fulfillment of the takeover agreement to be quite conceivable. It would also be possible, among other things, for the multi-billionaire Twitter to pay a contractual penalty of up to one billion dollars.