Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to news on October 5, Tesla CEO Elon Musk (Elon Musk) announced on Tuesday local time that he had agreed to continue to spend $44 billion on Twitter. Why did his attitude suddenly take a 180-degree reversal? This may be because a number of pre-trial decisions have heralded his defeat.

On Tuesday, Musk announced that he intended to continue with his original plan to buy Twitter for $54.2 a share. The timing of the news was ingenious because Mr Musk will go to court with Twitter in just a few days, accusing executives of the social media platform of misleading him about the number of fake accounts.

Musk's latest decision may have been influenced by six decisions made in the past three months by Justice Kathaleen St J. McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery, all of which favor Twitter and thwarted Musk's efforts to prove that he had a legal reason to withdraw from the deal.

Brian Quinn, a law professor at Boston College who specializes in M & A disputes, said: "it is clear from Judge McCormick's ruling that the judge is focused on the agreement signed by the two sides, not what Musk wants to talk about. Musk does not seem to have any support from the judge on the issue of fake accounts on Twitter."

To be sure, the judge ruled in Musk's favor on some issues, including letting him try to use charges made by Twitter whistler Peiter Zatko to support him in abandoning the acquisition. Zatko accused Twitter of being lax in ensuring computer security and the company's lack of interest in solving the problem of false accounts.

But Judge McCormick also severely criticized the Musk team for mishandling the pre-trial information exchange that is common in corporate litigation. In a ruling in September, she found that Mr Musk did not hand over the communications records of herself and his top aide, Jared Jared Birchall. The judge said Mr Musk and his lawyers had "obvious flaws" in responding to Twitter's request for text messages and in meeting deadlines.

Here are other decisions Musk lost:

1) one week after Twitter sued Musk in July, Judge McCormick rejected Musk's request to postpone the trial until February next year and scheduled the case for October 17. She also supported Twitter's request for a five-day trial.

2) in August, Judge McCormick ordered Musk to hand over information records of potential investors. As part of the deal, these people will participate in $7 billion in equity financing. Musk complains that Twitter has gone too far, arguing that Twitter has got enough data about investors. In addition, despite the protest of Musk's lawyer, McCormick agreed to Twitter's request for Musk to hand over information about "people who know or participate in key issues and events" in the deal.

3) at the end of September, Judge McCormick rejected Musk's request for Twitter to provide more documents relating to Twitter's internal estimates of fake accounts. The judge had previously concluded that Twitter had disclosed enough information.

Just before the public learned that Musk had decided to abandon the lawsuit against the takeover, Judge McCormick allowed Twitter to continue to expand the search for evidence that Musk and his lawyers had previously been in contact with Zatko. At the same time, she ordered Musk to expand the search for internal Twitter files, including text, instant messages and encrypted emails.

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