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A Delaware judge is hearing arguments about the sharing of information from lawyers for Twitter and Elon Musk in a lawsuit in which the social media giant seeks to force Musk to go through with its $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.
Tuesday’s hearing comes three weeks before a scheduled trial in the lawsuit and a day after scheduled depositions by Musk and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal were postponed. Musk is now scheduled to be arraigned in Delaware on Oct. 6 and 7, according to a Twitter court filing late Monday.
Musk, the world’s richest man, agreed in April to buy Twitter and take it private, offering $54.20 a share and promising to loosen the company’s content controls and weed out fake accounts. In July, Musk indicated that he wanted to withdraw from the deal, claiming that Twitter had not provided him with enough information about the number of fake accounts on its platform.
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Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE conference and exhibition in Washington. A Delaware judge is hearing arguments on September 27, 2022 regarding the sharing of information by attorneys in the Twitter lawsuit.
(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, file)
The hearing will begin with arguments on a motion by Musk’s lawyers to review their response to the lawsuit and their counterclaims against Twitter a second time. Musk’s lawyers want to add information about a severance agreement and a $7.75 million payment to former employee Peiter “Mudge” Zatko. Musk’s lawyers say Twitter needed his consent before making the payment, but it didn’t.
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Zatko is a cybersecurity expert who was Twitter’s chief security officer until he was fired earlier this year. He filed a whistleblower complaint in July with Congress, the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The complaint outlines a series of allegations against Twitter, including that CEO Parag Agrawal and other senior executives and board members have made false and misleading statements about Twitter’s cybersecurity, privacy and integrity.
Twitter’s lawyers argue that the inclusion of information about Zatko’s firing should be conditioned on Musk’s lawyers turning over records of all communications since December between Musk, his advisers and co-investors involving Zatko.
The judge will also hear arguments on several other disputes related to discovery, or the sharing of information, between lawyers for Musk and Twitter. They include efforts by Musk’s lawyers to obtain more data from a sampling of about 9,000 Twitter accounts in the fourth quarter of 2021 and claims that Twitter is withholding too much information as “privileged” or confidential. Musk’s lawyers also claim that Twitter is withholding incorrect information about user metrics.
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Meanwhile, lawyers for Twitter are asking the judge to sanction Musk’s lawyers for not producing responsive phone messages and to order them to comply with an earlier discovery order.
