Twitter Shares Pop 5% After Chancellor Rejects Musk’s Request To Delay Trial

It looks as though the Twitter versus Elon Musk drama is going to continue on schedule, according to a ruling out this morning by Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick. 

In the ruling, the court denied Musk’s request to delay the upcoming trial over whether or not he should be forced to fulfill his obligation to buy Twitter for $44 billion. Musk’s legal team had previously requested that the trial take place early next year, while Twitter originally requested the trial take place in October of this year. 

Musk’s legal team then changed their request and petitioned the court to have the trial start in mid-November, but the court ruled against them this morning. The trial is now expected to take place on October 17.

Shares of Twitter were up about 5% in early morning trading after the news broke:

McCormick’s ruling seemed to make it clear that she wasn’t interested in further delays. She wrote: “I previously rejected Defendants’ arguments in response to Twitter’s motion to expedite, making clear that the longer the delay until trial, the greater the risk of irreparable harm to Twitter. I am convinced that even four weeks’ delay would risk further harm to Twitter too great to justify.”

It wasn’t a total loss for Musk’s legal team, however. Their request that Musk would be allowed to add claims from a Twitter whistleblower to their suit was granted by the court. McCormick said there was a “low bar” for adding the claims that Musk’s team was able to meet. 

The whistleblower claims involved Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who claimed that Twitter had alleged “extreme, egregious deficiencies by Twitter” regarding privacy and security and that executives misled the board of directors on such issues. 

Musk’s team has claimed the whistleblower content could show that Twitter breached its terms of the merger agreement with Musk. 

Twitter, at the time the whistleblower went public, called the claims “a false narrative that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and presented without important context.” 

Developing…