As the trial date between Twitter and Elon Musk approaches, the latter’s lawyers are winning a battle. But they haven’t won the war yet.
Musk is currently being sued by Twitter for trying to get out of the platform’s takeover deal. As a reminder, the CEO of Tesla was preparing to buy the network from the blue bird for 44 billion dollars. The trial will be held on October 17.
Who is Kayvon Beykpour?
Elon Musk’s lawyers have requested access to the information of 22 Twitter employees, in addition to the 41 people who will already have to share their data, according to a prior agreement. But ultimately, Judge Kathaleen McCormick ruled that only one employee will have to provide documents: Kayvon Beykpour.
Beykpour is the former head of product at Twitter. He is at the origin of the tools that Twitter has put in place so that users can express themselves, such as Super Follows or the Spaces feature. He was fired last May by Twitter director Parag Agrawal, who wanted to ” take a new direction “.
Twitter will therefore have to collect, analyze and produce documents about Kayvon Beykpour and his internal communications, and deliver them to Musk and his lawyers.
Why does Musk want this information?
Since the announcement of the trial, the man and his lawyers have sought by all means to prove that the platform has committed serious misconduct. This would justify the withdrawal of Musk from the takeover agreement, which would therefore not have to pay the sum of a billion dollars for breach of contract.
Musk’s lawyers are therefore seeking information from Twitter employees to prove that the platform lied about the number of fake accounts. As a reminder, Twitter reported that the number of fake accounts on the platform is less than 5%, which Musk refused to believe. He then accused Twitter of seeking to obstruct the truth by denying him access to confidential documents the sharing of which was not part of the takeover agreement.
Source : The Verge
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