Twitter accused Elon Musk of breaking a deal to purchase the social media giant for $44 billion in a 62-page lawsuit filed on Tuesday. The richest man in the world, Musk, has attempted to back out of the deal, citing the prevalence of bogus accounts on Twitter and claiming that the firm misled him and did not provide enough information about the problem.
Twitter sued Musk in an effort to prove that it had the legal authority to do so, seal the purchase, and refute his allegations of wrongdoing. The corporation claimed that Musk was in fact breaking the contract. His escape plan was dubbed a “model of hypocrisy” and a “model of poor faith” by Twitter. The company later supported its arguments by presenting a series of tweets from Musk.
In contrast to Musk’s claims that Twitter obstructed his attempts to obtain data on spam accounts, the company claimed in its complaint that it had given him the information. When Musk requested the data, the firm complied with some of his requirements, such as providing its “fire hose,” or enormous flood of tweets.
However, Twitter said in its lawsuit that when it did so, Musk’s requests for information grew increasingly unreasonable.
The complaint claims that the defendants’ information demands “were from the beginning intended to attempt to sink the purchase.” Musk’s increasingly absurd demands “show not a sincere assessment of Twitter’s operations but a litigation-driven strategy to try to construct a record of Twitter’s noncooperation,” according to the statement.
According to Musk, Twitter’s public statements that around 5% of its users are bots are materially false, and as a result, would violate the terms of the agreement by having a “substantial detrimental effect.” The accuracy of Twitter’s regulatory reports since January is a requirement of Musk’s contract with the company.
However, Twitter pointed out that the estimations were included in its regulatory filings. (Parag Agrawal, CEO of Twitter, described how the firm finds and combats spam bots.)
In its complaint, Twitter said that Musk’s requests were consistent with the recruiting slowdown the firm has seen. The business also said that Musk’s attorneys had been advised of its decision to fire the two executives and that they had “made no issue.” When such determinations were communicated to Musk’s attorneys is not specified in the lawsuit.
In its complaint, Twitter claimed that Musk had violated the terms of the deal by appearing to give up on finishing his debt financing. Additionally, according to the firm, he vanished when Twitter’s officials, including Ned Segal, the company’s chief financial officer, contacted him to talk about the statistics on spam accounts that Musk had claimed to be worried about.
Musk was prohibited from disparaging Twitter or its workers via tweets, according to the agreement arrangement. Twitter said that despite this, he repeatedly broke the agreement by doing so.
Several screenshots of Musk’s tweets were included in the case, including one in which he claimed Twitter’s legal team had told him he had broken a nondisclosure agreement. In another, Musk responded to a tweet from Agrawal with a faeces emoji. Twitter also cited Musk’s public scepticism of Twitter’s revelations of its spam accounts in his tweets and speeches at conferences.
