Chancellor Kathaleen St. Judge McCormick denied Elon Musk’s request to interview other Twitter employees who had access to information about the bot, she ruled Monday. Musk’s lawyers may interview 41 people who had access to the robots’ information, known as “custodians” in court documents. However, 22 additional guardians will not be available to defense attorneys.
On August 10, Bloomberg reported that Musk’s lawyers were accusing Twitter of hiding potentially key witnesses who were particularly responsible for estimating the social media platform’s bot population. The lawyers sent a letter to Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick, where he asked for the names of those employees. Twitter had already submitted the names of 41 employees, including Twitter’s general manager of consumer affairs, Kayvon Beykpour. However, they were not “so familiar with the data in question”. Musk’s lawyers were seeking 22 more names, the Aug. 9 letter said.
However, McCormick ruled today that Twitter will not be required to release any information from the 22 “additional custodians:”
“Upon consideration of Defendants’ letter dated August 9, 2022 and Plaintiff’s letter dated August 11, 2022, it is ordered that Plaintiff collect, examine and produce documents from Kayvon Keykpour. Plaintiff is not required to collect, examine, or produce documents from any of the 22 additional custodians proposed by Defendants. Plaintiff need only collect, review, and produce documents from the 41 guardians Plaintiff has agreed to date and Mr. Beykpour.”
Order from McCormick Chancellor 👇🏻$TWTR$TSLA pic.twitter.com/WclPNKRe79
— David Tayar (@davidtayar5) August 15, 2022
Musk and Twitter will go to court on October 17 for a five-day trial. So far, multiple rulings in this case have gone to Twitter. Last week, Musk unloaded nearly $7 billion in TSLA stock in case the test results in a loss, which would force the buyout. “In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close.” AND some equity partners fall short, it’s important to avoid an emergency sell-off of Tesla stock,” he said on I tweet.
Musk offered to buy Twitter in May for $44 billion at $54.20 a share. However, he announced that he would withdraw from the deal a few months later, citing that Twitter faked the concentration of bot or spam/scam accounts. Twitter said less than 5 percent of its population are bots in SEC filings. However, Musk has asked for evidence that the concentration of bots on Twitter is less than 5 percent, which would likely invalidate the purchase if they were falsified.
Tesla’s CEO said he would be willing to complete the acquisition immediately if Twitter provided evidence that the site’s fraud/spam accounts actually make up less than 5 percent.
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