Elon Musk’s ‘absurdly broad’ Twitter data requests mostly rejected by judge

An image of Elon Musk is seen on a smartphone placed over printed Twitter logos in this photo illustration taken April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

WILMINGTON, Del., Aug 25 (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s requests for Twitter Inc ( TWTR.N ) user details were rejected as “absurdly broad” by a judge on Thursday, although the billionaire will get some data while he follows through on his bid to complete his $44 billion acquisition of the company.

Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery said many of Musk’s data requests were “absurdly broad,” amounting to trillions of data points that “nobody in their right mind has ever attempted to attempt such”.

The judge said Musk, the chief executive of Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ), had the records and documents needed to pursue his case, much of which had been secured before he said on July 8 that he was was terminating the deal in part because Twitter was withholding information. .

“My overall impression is that the plaintiff has agreed to provide a large amount of information to the defendants and that the information that the plaintiff has agreed to produce is broad enough to satisfy most of the plaintiff’s obligations,” wrote Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware Cancer Court.

Twitter was ordered to hand over data from 9,000 sampled accounts in a fourth-quarter audit to gauge the number of spam or bot users on the social media platform.

Twitter had said the data no longer existed and it would be cumbersome to recreate it, although McCormick gave the company two weeks to produce it.

“We look forward to reviewing the data that Twitter has withheld for many months,” Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, said in an emailed statement.

Twitter declined to comment.

Musk, the world’s richest man, has said he wants to test the accuracy of this audit because he believes the company fraudulently misrepresented that only 5% of its accounts were spam. He wants McCormick to decide he can get out of the deal.

Twitter wants McCormick to order Musk to close the deal at the agreed-upon price of $54.20 per share. Shares briefly rose about 1% after the decision and ended up 0.6% at $41.05.

A five-day trial is set for October 17.

Twitter said in a court hearing Wednesday that Musk’s focus on spam was “legally irrelevant” because the company has described the number of spam in regulatory filings as an estimate, not a representation. He also said the real level of spam could be higher.

Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Richard Chang

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