Elon Musk will indeed be able to introduce new proof from a Twitter whistleblower in his quest to get out of his $44 billion contract to buy the social media business, but the judge ruled on Wednesday that Musk will not be able to stall a high-stakes trial that is scheduled to take place in October over the issue.
Musk's motion to postpone the trial by four weeks was denied by Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery. The former Twitter security head Peiter Zatko is slated to testify before Congress the following week about the company's weak cybersecurity policies, but she permitted the billionaire Tesla CEO to add information connected to whistleblower charges.
To get Musk to fulfill his April promise to buy Twitter, Twitter has filed a lawsuit in Delaware state court. Musk has responded to the allegations by filing a countersuit, and the trial is scheduled to begin the week of October 17.
To support Musk's accusations that Twitter deceived him and the public about the company's problem with phony and "spam" accounts, Musk's legal team has suggested that Zatko's complaints made to U.S. regulators may help.
Famous hacker "Mudge," aka cybersecurity specialist Zatko, claims he was sacked in January after raising concerns about Twitter's lack of attention to its users' security and privacy.
After Musk's and Twitter's attorneys battled for hours on Tuesday about the validity of Zatko's accusations and the pace at which each side is preparing evidence for trial, the judge issued his verdict.
Lawyers for Twitter tried to downplay the importance of Zatko's claims in the merger dispute by pointing out that his initial 27-page complaint and subsequent retaliation claim made no reference to the "spam bot" issues that Musk has identified as a reason to terminate the acquisition.
William Savitt, an attorney for Twitter, stated that prior to Zatko's whistleblower report in July, the former employee never mentioned a word about spam or bots.
Twitter has contended for weeks that Musk's stated reasons for pulling out were really buyer's remorse after agreeing to pay 38% above Twitter's stock price shortly before the stock market collapsed and Tesla shares, where much of Musk's personal fortune resides, lost more than $100 billion of their worth.
On Wednesday, Judge McCormick stated that the newly disclosed whistleblower complaint provided Musk's team with grounds to change their countersuit, but she declined to comment on the specifics.
She noted that she was hesitant to comment further on the issues of the counterarguments at this stage before they had been fully litigated. We'll all need to wait for the verdict after the trial ends.
McCormick, on the other hand, agreed with Twitter's argument that postponing the trial would hamper its ability to resume operations.
She said that even a delay of four weeks may cause irreparable harm to Twitter.
During the afternoon session of trading, Twitter's share price increased by 5.5%, reaching $40.77.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on Headline USA.
