Twitter hires elite lawyers to sue Elon Musk over abandoned deal

Twitter has hired an elite law firm to sue Elon Musk for abandoning his purchase of the platform – but can he be made to go through with it?

Twitter is said to have hired an elite law firm as it plans to go up against the world’s richest person, Elon Musk.

The social media platform’s board agreed to Mr Musk buying the company for $US44 billion ($61.4 billion) in late April.

But just days ago it was announced he was ditching the deal and now, a messy courtroom battle is anticipated.

Bloomberg has reported that Twitter has hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, according to sources.

The company is expected to file a lawsuit early this week in the Delaware Chancery Court, the sources, who were not identified, said.

Twitter is planning to sue the world’s richest person, Elon Musk. Picture: Angela Weiss/AFP

Mr Musk, chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, will be represented by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP.

He had previously accused Twitter of “resisting and thwarting” his attempts to access information about fake accounts, saying the deal could not progress until the issue was settled.

He claimed up to 20 per cent of Twitter’s 229 million users could be fake. The company itself insists the true figure is about 5 per cent.

His lawyers wrote in a letter to Twitter last week: “Mr Musk is terminating the merger agreement because Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that agreement, [and] appears to have made false and misleading representations, upon which Mr Musk relied, when entering into the merger agreement.”

The big question now is if Mr Musk loses the legal battle with Twitter, could he actually be forced to buy the social media platform?

Zohar Goshen, professor of transactional law at Columbia Law School, raised this issue with the Wall Street Journal, as the situation is unprecedented.

According to the publication, most examples of buyers being forced to follow-through under the ­“specific-performance” clause that Mr Musk agreed to have been small deals and never of this scale.

“They don’t really have tools to force him to go through with it. You don’t put people in jail because they don’t buy something,” Mr Goshen said.

Relief and disappointment for abandoned Twitter deal

Mr Musk’s move to abandon his purchase of Twitter has been greeted with a mix of relief and disappointment across the political spectrum, with many criticising the billionaire but others applauding his “exposure” of the influential messaging platform.

The announcement of the deal sparked fears the platform would see a surge in abuse and disinformation after Mr Musk – a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist – said he would largely let anyone say anything allowed by law on Twitter.

“For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally,” he wrote in one tweet.

Some people have celebrated Mr Musk’s decision to not buy Twitter, while others have expressed disappointment. Picture: Chris Delmas/AFP

The announcement that he no longer wanted to buy Twitter triggered celebration by advocacy groups that had launched a campaign to stop Mr Musk from going through with the purchase.

“A Twitter under Musk’s leadership would have ripped open Pandora’s box and reopened the floodgates for hate and baseless conspiracy theories – making the platform, and the country, a more dangerous place,” said Bridget Todd, communications director at advocacy group UltraViolet.

“[The deal breakdown] is a welcome reprieve for women, people of colour and members of the LGBTQ+ community,” she said.

Nicole Gill, co-founder and executive director of the left-leaning watchdog Accountable Tech, slammed Mr Musk’s bid as “a chaotic crusade”.

“Our information ecosystem, safety and democracy cannot remain at the whim of unaccountable billionaires,” she said.

But hopes were dashed for others who believed Mr Musk’s steering of the platform would lead to a decrease in measures aimed at curbing bullying, lies and other abuses deemed politically motivated and anti-free speech.

“The party is really over here. The purge is coming,” tweeted conservative commentator Dave Rubin.

Former US president Donald Trump appeared to celebrate the ‘dead’ Twitter deal on his own social media platform, Truth Social. Picture: Chandan Khanna/AFP

Donald Trump Jr, the son of the former president, predicted “censorship” at Twitter “will be back tenfold”.

“Zero chance of free thought or speech there at this point,” he said on his father’s fledgling Truth Social platform, launched after he was booted from his preferred medium where he’d amassed some 88.7 million followers.

The former president was banned from Twitter following accusations he had used it to incite his followers to assault the US Capitol on January 6 last year.

While Musk said he would lift the ban on the elder Trump, the fellow billionaire said he would stick to Truth Social – a message he reiterated on Friday.

“THE TWITTER DEAL IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE ‘TRUTH’,” he posted on Truth Social.

– with AFP