The Delaware Court of Chancery was urged to reject the motion for an expedited trial by Musk. According to Musk's court filing, the trial should begin on or after February 13, 2023, which is when the four-day trial was supposed to be finished.
Two months have passed since defendants' information requests were turned down. Musk's motion said that the sudden request for warp speed after two months of foot-dragging and obfuscation is its latest tactic to shroud the truth. According to Musk's legal team, the core dispute over false and spam accounts is fundamental to the value of the service, and that resolving these issues will require complex, technical discovery.
The lawsuit was filed on July 12 and demanded that Musk complete his purchase of the company. The contract's drop-dead date for the merger was cited in the motion.
"Expedition of trial proceedings is necessary to ensure sufficient time for this Court to grant effective relief and for the Delaware Supreme Court to review this Court's decision", according to the statement. A trial in September leaves the parties and this Court more than two months to complete pre- trial discovery and briefings, which is in line with the expedited schedules this Court has ordered in similar merger enforcement cases.
AdvertisementThe trial should have been held before October 24. If either party files litigation, the October 24th Termination Date in the merger agreement is automatically stayed. Musk's motion said that the need for a September trial has been rendered useless by the complaint.
The merger agreement states that if either Musk or Twitter sued to enforce the contract, the Termination Date would be extended to 20th of June.
The debt financing supporting the deal is due to end on April 25, 2023, according to Musk. Musk's motion said that the request to cut the schedule in half was implausible.
The data science questions surrounding the accuracy of the disclosures about the number of false and fake accounts are implicating in the dispute. The factual record about these representations will likely involve sifting through hundreds of billions of actions on the social networking site. The time it will take to load, process and analyze the hundreds of terabytes of relevant data will surpass the hasty schedule of the court.
The trial will require at least 30-40 fact depositions and at least 12 expert depositions.
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