Twitter sues Elon Musk over attempt to abandon $44 billion takeover

Twitter has sued Elon Musk for his attempt to walk away from the $44 billion takeover bid. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Chancery Court in Delaware, lawyers for Twitter accused Elon Musk of “refusing to honor his obligations.” 

Elon Musk left the $54.20 per share deal for the San Francisco-based social media platform on Friday, partially citing concerns about the number of fake accounts among users. A couple of days ago, Elon Musk mocked Twitter’s preparations to sue and force him to complete his takeover of the company following his move to pull out of the deal. 

Twitter sent a letter dated July 10 to Elon Musk saying his effort to abandon his $44 billion takeover is “invalid and wrongful” and that Twitter hasn’t breached any of its obligations.

Elon Musk’s deal with Twitter included a provision that if the deal is broken, the party breaking the deal would pay a termination fee of $1 billion under certain conditions. The merger deal also includes a special performance provision that allows Twitter to force Musk to complete the deal. Twitter must prove that it did not violate the terms of the acquisition agreement and that Musk violated the agreement by withdrawing it.

In a 62-page lawsuit, Twitter alleges that Musk materially violated the original agreement, citing no fewer than 13 Musk tweets. One of the tweets cited in the lawsuit was that Elon Musk announced that his Twitter deal was temporarily on hold. “Musk had no basis for asserting that the deal was “on hold” based on this longstanding disclosure. Twitter’s deal counsel called Musk’s deal counsel. Two hours after the “on hold” Tweet was published, Musk belatedly Tweeted that he was still “committed” to the deal,” the lawsuit said.