Elon Musk Countersued Twitter Amid $44 Billion Deal

Twitter did not Respond!

After the long-going battle of words of the Twitter Deal, Elon Musk countersued the trendiest social media Twitter, escalating his legal fight against the social media company over his bid to walk away from the $44 billion purchase, although the lawsuit was filed confidentially.

Although 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 Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery ordered a five-day trial beginning Oct. 17 to determine if Musk can walk away from the deal.

The social media did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The world's richest person and chief executive of Tesla Inc, said 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 per share. The company's shares ended at $41.61, the highest close since Musk abandoned the deal.

McCormick fast-tracked the case to trial last week, saying she wanted to limit the potential harm to Twitter caused by the uncertainty of the deal.

Twitter has blamed the court fight for slumping revenue and causing chaos within the company.

The two sides had agreed 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 dragging its feet in response to his discovery requests, and Twitter accused him of seeking amounts of data that are irrelevant to the main issue in the case: whether Musk had violated the deal contract.

The chief judge in her order appeared to anticipate discovery disputes to come.

"This order does not resolve any specific discovery disputes, including the propriety of any requests for large data sets," said McCormick.