Twitter trial prep: Elon Musk demands documents from Jack Dorsey

The trial between the social media company Twitter and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, begins on 17 October in the US state of Delaware. Preparations for it are in full swing on both sides. Now Musk is seeking documents from Twitter co-founder and former CEO of the tech company, Jack Dorsey, with a court order.

These documents are said to support Musk's allegations against Twitter. The billionaire claims that the social media company was not transparent during the acquisition and presented false user figures. Specifically, Musk accuses Twitter of concealing the true number of bots on the platform.

Why is there a lawsuit?

In April, Musk made an official offer to buy the social media platform - at the time, the billionaire wanted to acquire the tech company for US$54.20 per share. An offer that was initially resisted by the tech company's board of directors.

After intensive talks, the two parties reached an agreement towards the end of April and the takeover contract was signed. But by May, Musk seemed to get cold feet - he wanted to put the takeover on hold for the time being because of unanswered questions about user numbers and bot inventories.

In mid-July, the billionaire officially killed the deal by filing the relevant documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The tech company had violated the requirements of the takeover agreement by making false statements. Twitter responded by filing a lawsuit with the Delaware Court of Chancery - a court in the state of the company's headquarters. But Musk's counterclaim was not long in coming.

What do the two parties want?

Twitter wants to use the lawsuit to force Musk to agree to the takeover. Musk, on the other hand, wants the court to absolve him of the takeover based on Twitter's allegedly misleading claims about the number of active users and bots.

Who the court will rule in favour of is still completely unclear. One possibility would be that Musk would be obliged to pay the so-called "break up fee" - so the Tesla and SpaceX CEO would have to pay a penalty of one billion US dollars for breaking the contract.

Dorsey not the only one

In addition to Dorsey, other former Twitter employees must also release documents for the lawsuit. According to Bloomberg, Kayvon Beykpour, former head of consumer product, and Bruce Falck, former head of revenue product, also received similar orders from the Delaware court before the weekend.

Jack Dorsey and former Twitter employees must release documents for trial.

Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk are said to be friends and have a similar view of Twitter's opportunities and problems. When the acquisition was announced, Dorsey affirmed in a tweet that Musk was the only solution for the platform that he trusted.