Elon Musk’s legal team has responded to Twitter’s lawsuit over Musk’s withdrawal from a deal to buy the social networking platform for $44 billion. While Twitter asked for the trial to take place in early September, Musk’s team asked for time and said the trial would have to wait until next year.
In a counter filing by Musk’s lawyers, Twitter’s lawsuit was cited as a ploy by the company to cover up the truth about bot or spam accounts. They requested that the trial be postponed to at least February 13, 2023.
“It would be a ‘tremendous achievement’ to try such a complicated deal case even in five to six months,” Musk’s attorney said. “Having a trial in February 2023 will balance the interests of the parties and the court.”
As is known, Twitter sued Musk earlier this week after he officially announced that it was canceling its acquisition of Twitter. However, Twitter board chairman Bret Taylor said the company would push for the deal to go ahead as planned, bringing the matter to court.
The reason Musk stopped buying Twitter was because the company had not provided him with the data to make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on the Twitter platform.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Musk’s legal team considers issues related to bot accounts and spam to be important to Twitter’s value. It will take time to prove whether the company’s claims against the number of fake accounts are true or not.
