Twitter To Present Former Official’s Documents to Elon Musk, Says Court

The date of the five-day trial between the two is set for 17 October.

Twitter's chairperson Bret Taylor said that the company is committed to closing the transaction on the agreed upon terms and is confident it will prevail in court.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

As per a court order dated Monday, 15 August, Elon Musk is awaiting documents from a former Twitter executive who Musk said was a key figure in calculating the amount of fake accounts on the platform, Reuters reported.

The social media giant was ordered to collect, review and produce documents from former General Manager of Consumer Product Kayvon Beykpou, as per Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery.

Chancellor McCormick had earlier ordered a five-day trial,starting 17 October, to determine if the Tesla CEO can walk away from the multi-billion dollar deal with the social media company.

The issue of bot and spam accounts has become central in the legal battle between the two. On 6 August, Musk had even challenged Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to a public debate about the percentage of bots on the platform.

Background

Twitter had sued Tesla CEO Elon Musk on 12 July for reneging on his $44 billion deal to acquire the microblogging platform and asked a court in US' Delaware to order him to go ahead with the merger at the agreed price.

Musk subsequently filed a countersuit claiming that he was tricked into signing the agreement with false claims and misrepresentations. Twitter has since then dismissed this claim.

Meanwhile, Twitter and lawyers for Musk did not immediately revert back to Reuters after Monday's development.

(With inputs from Reuters.)