You’ll remember that last week we told you that Twitter and Elon Musk will meet for the first time in the social network’s lawsuit against the billionaire this week, today, July 19 to be exact. It was, as we told you, a hearing where Judge Kathaleen McCormick heard requests from both sides regarding the date and duration of the trial. This hearing has already taken place and we can state categorically that Elon Musk is off to a bad start.

The demands of the two sides differed substantially in these respects, with Twitter wanting the trial to be held in September next year and lasting four days, versus Musk’s request, which called for the trial to be held in February next year and lasting ten days. total, Twitter wants a quick trial and ASAP, Elon Musk wants more time, both ways.

Twitter argued for the trial to be held as soon as possible its current situation as a listed company is extremely unstable. Elon Musk’s moves would cause a substantial loss in the value of its shares, and the management of the social network believes that prolonging this situation for several months could be extremely harmful to the company. And as for its duration, everything indicates that they intend to enforce the terms of the agreement signed between the two parties, without taking into account other considerations, such as those that Musk proposed to withdraw from the purchase.

“Millions of Twitter shares trade daily under a cloud of doubt created by Musk“, confirms Twitter in the submitted documentation. “No public company of this size has had to endure these uncertainties“.

We can also read the following in it:In his press release announcing the deal on April 25, 2022, Musk called for an awakening to “kill the robots.” However, when the market fell and the fixed-price deal became less attractive, Musk changed his story, abruptly demanding “verification” that spam was not a serious problem on the Twitter platform and citing an urgent need to run an “errand” he had. expressly waived“.

On the other hand, defending the position Elon Musk says he needs more time to gather the necessary information in order to prove, according to them, that the numbers provided by Twitter regarding the number of bots present on the platform are greater than the numbers provided by the social network at the time of signing the purchase transaction. Something that also explains that their wishes went through a longer process to reveal all the evidence they hoped to have accumulated early next year.

Musk’s defense also argued that it makes no sense to think the billionaire intends to cause the share price to fall, as he is currently the company’s second-largest shareholder. But that argument is countered by the fact that he publicly used his Twitter account to call on the SEC to investigate the company.

The judge did not choose the approach of either party, although her decision is in this respect much closer to the postulate of Twitter than to the postulate of Elon Musk, because the trial will eventually take place in October and last five days. This is quite a setback for Musk, as he won’t have the time he felt was necessary to complete his investigation, and worse, it signals that, at least on this point, the judge is more aligned with Twitter’s thesis than theirs. .

So October will be a very intense month for both Twitter and Elon Musk, who, despite starting off on the wrong foot, still has room to back out of the purchase agreement without taking a huge economic hit. Not much of a reserve, yes, both Delaware state law and the judicial record added to today’s decision should prompt the billionaire to prepare for the worst just in case.

With information from TechCrunch