Elon Musk may have access to Twitter data used in a 2021 audit of active users, but other information the billionaire is seeking in an effort to end his $44 billion deal to buy the company was rejected as “grossly absurd,” a judge said Thursday.
Twitter must hand over data from 9,000 accounts sampled in the fourth quarter as part of its process to estimate the number of spam accounts.
Twitter had said the data did not exist and it would be cumbersome to collect it. Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick gave the company two weeks to produce the data.
Musk has claimed the company misled him by misrepresenting the number of real users in its financial disclosures, which he relied on to make his takeover offer, and he wanted the data to confirm Twitter’s spam estimates. .
“We look forward to reviewing the data that Twitter has withheld for many months,” Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, said in an emailed statement.
Twitter declined to comment.
A five-day trial is set for October 17.
McCormick also rejected many of Musk’s other requests for data.
“The requests for data of the defendants are absurdly broad. Read literally, defendants’ request for documents would require plaintiff to produce trillions upon trillions of data points,” she wrote.
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.
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.
