The Daily Telegraph

Musk faces fast-tracked Twitter trial

- By Matthew Field

TWITTER has been granted a fast-track hearing in its attempt to force Elon Musk to complete his $44bn (£37bn) takeover, after accusing the Tesla billionair­e of harming the company “every hour of every day”.

Delaware judge Kathaleen Mccormick ruled in favour of Twitter yesterday, setting a trial date for October. Mr Musk’s lawyers had attempted to push the trial back to next year.

Twitter will argue Mr Musk should be forced to go through with the deal, which was agreed in April but collapsed earlier this month. Mr Musk walked away after claiming Twitter had failed to make appropriat­e disclosure­s about fake accounts.

Lawyers for the social media company yesterday accused Mr Musk of “conjuring an exit ramp”. Mr Musk has claimed Twitter’s reported number of “bots”, or spam accounts, is too low. Twitter has said roughly 5pc of accounts are bots. Mr Musk has claimed the true figure is closer to 20pc.

Mr Musk’s lawyers said “The idea Mr Musk is trying to damage the company is prepostero­us.”

The case continues.

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