Elon Musk has been locked in a bitter legal battle with Twitter (File)
New York:
Elon Musk on Friday added a severance payment made by Twitter to a whistleblower to the list of reasons he believes he has the right to walk away from his $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform.
A termination letter sent to Twitter accused the company of failing to inform him about a multimillion-dollar severance payment it made in June to departing security chief Peiter Zatko, who filed a whistleblower complaint criticizing the practices of Twitter’s security, according to a copy of the letter filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Musk’s lawyers argued that not seeking his consent before paying Zatko provides another legal basis to break the merger agreement with Twitter he signed in April.
Twitter disagrees.
“My friend appears to be arguing that Twitter should have told Musk for free that there was a disgruntled former employee who made several allegations that were investigated and found to be without merit,” the lawyer said of Twitter William Savitt earlier this week.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
Musk, the world’s richest man, said in his original termination letter that he was canceling the deal because Twitter was misled about the number of bot accounts on its platform, allegations denied by the company
In a mixed ruling earlier this week, Kathaleen McCormick, the Delaware court chancellor overseeing the case, said Musk could add disclosures of Zatko’s allegations that emerged in August.
But she denied his request to push back the litigation, saying prolonging the lawsuit would “risk further damage to Twitter too great to warrant.”
Musk has been locked in a bitter legal battle with Twitter since he announced in July that he was pulling the plug on buying the company after a complex, volatile, months-long courtship.
The five-day trial is set to begin Oct. 17 in Delaware court.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)