Twitter sues Elon Musk for backing out of $44 billion acquisition, saying the billionaire is obligated to complete the deal

The company sued Musk after he tried to walk away from the platform purchase.

Musk was accused of not honoring his obligations in the lawsuit. The suit was filed in a Delaware court.

Musk's attempt last week to "terminate" the merger agreement he signed in April is at the center of the lawsuit. Musk's move was called invalid and wrongful by lawyers for the social networking site.

In Musk's letter backing out of the deal, he accused the company of lying to him and the SEC about the number of fake accounts on the platform, as well as of conducting layoffs. Lawyers for Musk said that all of them constituted a "breach" of the agreement. He doesn't have to pay the $1 billion break-up fee if he walks away from the deal.

All of those points were pushed back by the company. It was argued that the merger agreement Musk signed in April is binding and that he needs to complete it as agreed to because it no longer serves his interests.

Musk's personal wealth is largely tied up in his company's stock price, which has fallen this year, as well as tech stocks generally. The value of his stake in the company has fallen by more than 100 billion dollars. Musk wants to shift the cost of the market downturn onto the shareholders of the company he is buying.

Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller friendly merger agreement, Musk apparently believes that he is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder. A long list of material contractual breeches by Musk have cast a pall over the company.

The financing for the deal was one of the areas that was covered by the social media site. The debt and equity financing parts of the deal were called air tight by the platform.

The company blamed Musk for the decline in its own stock price, which is down 20% this year, saying the billionaires "antics" and the "disdain he has shown" for the company created more business risks.

Musk is obligated to acquire the company at the agreed upon price, despite all of this. The court was asked to close the deal and to stop him from breaching it.

Musk's lawyers could not be reached.

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