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

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has not yet reached an agreement with Twitter on a breach of contract lawsuit, and the presiding judge is still preparing for the trial to be held on October 17, local time, according to people familiar with the matter.

Later on Monday, local time, Musk wrote to Twitter that if Twitter dropped the lawsuit against him, he would change his mind and abide by the agreement reached in April to buy the company for $54.2 a share.

However, the Twitter legal team has not yet accepted the agreement. Twitter admitted on Tuesday that it had received a renewed offer from Mr Musk and planned to complete the deal at an agreed price, but had not commented on the matter.

Justice Catherine McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery (Kathaleen McCormick) said she was preparing for the upcoming trial.

Judge McCormick wrote in a court filing on Wednesday: "No request has been made for a stay of action, nor has any party proposed a stay of action. Therefore, I will continue to press ahead with the trial scheduled to begin on October 17, 2022."

Judge McCormick continued to order Musk and his legal team to provide more evidence in the case and criticized them for not properly handing over communications that could be evidence of Twitter litigation, although she currently refuses to impose any penalties. She said the two missing text messages in May and June showed that Musk was using other channels of information that were not captured by text messages such as iMessage or Signal.

The judge also said that while Mr Musk said he had never used Signal to communicate about the deal after an exchange with venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in April, a Signal message from his senior aide, Jared Burchard, suggested that Mr Musk had continued to use the service and used the automatic deletion feature since then.

Judge McCormick said: "I have to come to the conclusion that it is likely that the guardian of the defendant allowed the automatic deletion of Signal communications between them and others, which have been irreparably lost. At this stage, I am not sure whether the deletion occurred when the defendant had the responsibility to keep the documents. If the defendant deletes the document after being obliged to keep it, appropriate compensation measures should be taken, but I do not know what measures to take at this stage. "

On Tuesday, Twitter's legal team and Musk's lawyers updated the judge on their efforts to overcome mutual mistrust and find a deal to close.

A lawyer who filed a class action lawsuit against Mr. Musk on behalf of Twitter shareholders wrote to Judge McCormick that if Mr. Musk reneged on his word again, he should be asked to pay a large deposit. Lawyer Michael Michael Hanrahan said in the letter that Mr. Musk should also bear the interest for delaying the completion of the deal.

Musk is scheduled to be questioned on Thursday in Austin, Texas, local time, providing bargaining chips for Twitter to complete negotiations on the deal. Musk cancelled his testimony in late September, citing concerns that a Twitter lawyer may have come into contact with COVID-19, according to a court document released on Wednesday.

Twitter shares closed down 1.3% at $51.30 on Wednesday. On Tuesday, the stock hit its highest level since Musk and Twitter reached an agreement in April.

Mr Musk said in July that he would withdraw from the deal because he found that Twitter had misled him about the number of fake accounts. Mr Musk's counterclaim stems in part from public allegations made in August by Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, a Twitter whistle.

Twitter's legal team wants to investigate Alex Spiro, a lawyer at the law firm Quinn Emanuel, on the grounds that he may have communicated with Mr Musk about the matter as early as May.

Twitter lawyers suspect Zatko sent an anonymous email to Spiro on May 6. The sender, who claimed to be a former employee of Twitter, provided more information about the company and suggested further communication through other means.

Spiro said in a court filing on Wednesday that he had never read the email until Twitter caught his attention and someone seemed to be looking for a job. Spiro also said he was not aware of Zatko's allegations until they were made public on Aug. 23.

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