Twitter sues Elon Musk to force him to go through with $44B deal

Twitter has made good on its warning to sue Elon Musk for trying to back out of his $44 billion offer to purchase the social media platform.

The company filed its lawsuit against the billionaire Tesla CEO Tuesday in Chancery Court in Delaware.

Twitter vowed to take action Friday after Musk soured on the offer he proposed in April.

“Now, less than three months later, Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests,” Twitter said in the suit, obtained by the Daily News. “Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away.”

Elon Musk attends The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" exhibition on May 2, 2022, in New York. (Evan Agostini/)

Musk tweeted, “Oh the irony lol,” after news of the lawsuit broke.

Musk filed notice that he intended to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share three months ago, offering above what it was believed to be worth. But he cooled on the deal in recent weeks, claiming the company doesn’t have as many users as it claimed once bots and fake accounts are figured into the equation.

The world’s richest man responded to Twitter’s board of directors’ warnings with a tweet showing him laughing at the notion that the company, where some opposed his acquisition, is now willing to go to court to make him buy it.

The logo for Twitter appears above a trading post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Nov. 29, 2021. (Richard Drew/)

Musk’s offer was met with excitement by many on the conservative side of the political spectrum, who accused the social media company of moderating content in a fashion that’s at odds with their ideology.

Delaware Chancery Court, where the suit was filed, has special expertise in corporate law and has resolved similar cases, said University of Richmond School of Law Prof. Carl Tobias.

”Musk seemed to have buyer’s remorse rather soon after the deal was reached, but he waived due diligence and agreed to a $1 billion breakup fee,” Tobias told The News.

He also questioned why the company would want Musk running it after all the back and forth. ”Most of these types of disputes settle, because litigation can be protracted, expensive, distracting from day-to-day operations, and lead to revelation of negative information about the litigants,” he said. “That is what could happen here, but it is difficult to say how swiftly the sides might agree to settle. If they cannot, the suit could take a year to resolve.”