WILMINGTON: A Twitter lawyer testified before a judge on Tuesday that Elon Musk’s analysis of Twitter Inc. accounts by his advisors did not support the billionaire’s claim that the percentage of bogus users was “wildly higher” than 5% as he stated when he said he was cancelling the Twitter takeover deal in July.
According to documents received from two data scientists working for Musk, early estimates of the percentage of phony accounts on the network ranged between 5.3% and 11%, the lawyer told a Delaware judge. According to what we can discern, none of these assessments remotely supported what Mr. Musk wrote on Twitter and in the termination letter, according to the attorney Bradley Wilson.
An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by Musk or his lawyer. In their legal dispute, Musk and Twitter are asking the judge to require Musk to consummate the transaction at $54.20 per share. The price of stock rose 1.4% to $42.09 as of Tuesday’s close.
They will stand trial in Wilmington’s Court of Chancery beginning on October 17th.Musk agreed to purchase Twitter for $44 billion in April, but within weeks he started to protest that there were far more bot accounts than Twitter had estimated—more than 10% of users.
On July 8, Musk claimed that Twitter had misled him and that the actual amount was “wildly larger,” allowing him to withdraw from the agreement without incurring any penalties. At a hearing where both sides were requesting that the judge order the other side to turn over further messages or documents (a procedure known as discovery), Wilson brought up the data scientists’ report.
Also on Tuesday, a court notice said that Musk’s deposition will now take place on October 6-7 rather than this week.