While waiting for the lawsuit between Twitter and Elon Musk to begin, lawyers for the two parties are arguing through legal documents sent to the court. An astonishing proposal, and seems to be there only for the spectacle: the debate proposed by Elon Musk between him and the CEO of Twitter. But there is a trial that can be used for this.
Elon Musk wanted a trial in 2023, but the Delaware court ultimately favored a shorter deadline. It is from October 17 to 21, 2022 that the trial between the boss of Tesla and Twitter will be held, with the aim of answering the question ” Can Elon Musk give up the takeover of the social network? “, after having promised to acquire it for 44 billion dollars in April.
The debates promise to be tense, because neither of the two parties concerned seems to want to talk about the same thing. Twitter wants to stick to the signed contract, Elon Musk wants to question the number of fake accounts on the platform – which is not the subject of the lawsuit. A dialogue of the deaf, which has already begun.
Lawyers for Elon Musk and Twitter have indeed already started sending lengthy documents to the court. Some passages can make you smile, others give a nice foretaste of the content of the debates, which promise to be lively.
Twitter laughs and confirms that “Musk tweets a lot”
Elon Musk’s lawyers published an initial 165-page document (recovered by The Verge), while those of Twitter wrote a 127-page text. The first brings almost no surprise, Elon Musk considers that Twitter is not what he thought he was buying and therefore wants to reconsider his commitment. On the other hand, the second is much more interesting. And tasty.
This consists of a succession of responses to statements by Elon Musk, with a touch of irony. Twitter plays the card of transparency on certain elements, denies others, but above all it has fun making fun of the opposing party by responding to the obvious. The social network also says that the arguments deployed by the American entrepreneur can be denied by the ” common sense “. A way for the site to try to take a little height. Here are some of the statements from the document:
- “Twitter acknowledges that Musk is a Twitter user and has founded multiple businesses.”
- “Twitter recognizes that its business is complex.”
- “Twitter recognizes that Musk tweets a lot.”
- “Twitter admits Musk is a Twitter user and has over 100 million followers.”
It would seem that Twitter responds to all the sentences written by the billionaire’s lawyers, including those who did not expect a response. The representatives of the social network also respond seriously to some much more central points. They say for example “not knowing if Musk believes in free speech” and acknowledge not having provided the documents requested by the person concerned on the false accounts before April 28, since Elon Musk had not signed a confidentiality agreement. A way of saying that there was nothing abnormal, contrary to what Musk claims.
Elon Musk proposes a public debate at Parag Agrawal
For his part, Elon Musk is more discreet. We are beginning to discover the list of participants in the trial (many of Musk’s relatives are invited), but the billionaire comments little on the case. He made an exception on the weekend of August 6, indicating once again that everything would be played on the question of fake accounts. If Twitter’s methodology is good, he’s not opposed to buying Twitter. Otherwise, he wants out of the buyout. Elon Musk proposed to Parag Agrawal, the boss of Twitter, a public debate… but seems to forget that this is precisely the purpose of the trial.
What would be the point of this public debate? Elon Musk continued the conversation by calling on his fans to answer the following question “Are there less than 5% fake accounts on Twitter? “. Unsurprisingly, they went his way, which suits him as evidence. Not sure the judge sees it the same way.