Elon Musk hit back at Twitter Inc on Friday, escalating his legal battle against the social media company over his bid to walk away from the $44 billion takeover, although the lawsuit was filed confidentially.
While the 164-page document was not publicly available, under court rules a redacted version could soon be made public.
Musk’s lawsuit was filed hours after Delaware Court of Chancery Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick ordered a five-day trial starting Oct. 17 to determine whether Musk can walk away from the deal.
Read also: Twitter agrees to Oct. 17 trial on Elon Musk deal, but worried about ‘delay’
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also on Friday, Musk was sued by a Twitter shareholder, who asked the court to order the billionaire to close the deal, find that he breached his fiduciary duty to Twitter shareholders and pay damages for the losses he caused.
Musk owes a duty of loyalty to Twitter shareholders because of his 9.6% stake in the company and because the purchase agreement gives him veto power over many of the company’s decisions, according to the suit, which seeks status of the class. The lawsuit was brought by Luigi Crispo, who owns 5,500 shares in Twitter, in the Court of Cancer.
Musk, the world’s richest man and chief executive of Tesla Inc, said on July 8 that he was abandoning the takeover and blamed Twitter Inc for breaching the agreement by misrepresenting the number of fake accounts on its platform.
Twitter sued days later, calling the fake account claims a distraction and saying Musk was bound by the merger contract to close the deal at $54.20 a share. The company’s shares ended Friday at $41.61, the highest close since Musk walked away from the deal.
McCormick fast-tracked the case to trial last week, saying she wanted to limit potential damage to Twitter caused by the deal’s uncertainty.
Twitter has blamed the legal battle for falling revenue and causing chaos within the company.
The two sides had agreed in principle to an Oct. 17 trial, but were at odds over the limits of discovery, or access to internal documents and other evidence.
Musk accused Twitter this week of being slow to respond to his discovery requests, and Twitter accused him of seeking large amounts of data unrelated to the main issue in the case: whether Musk had breached the deal.
Read also: Elon Musk breaks his silence on the $44 billion deal with a meme and a Twitter slide
The chief justice in her order Friday seemed to anticipate the discovery disputes to come.
“This order does not resolve any specific discovery disputes, including the propriety of any requests for large data sets,” McCormick said.
Musk also faces a week-long trial in Wilmington, Delaware, starting Oct. 24. A Tesla shareholder is seeking to write off the electric vehicle maker’s record $56 billion CEO pay package as a corporate loss and unjust enrichment.
