Twitter Lawyers Up Against Elon Musk, Hires Firm That Came Up With 'Poison Pill' Strategy

Twitter wants to go through with its deal with Elon Musk seemingly by any means necessary.

The popular social media and microblogging platform allegedly hired the firm that invented the "poison pill" defense tactic to stop Musk from acquiring the company to do the opposite thing - keep him from backing out of the deal, per The Verge.

Musk recently announced he wants to back out from his Twitter acquisition due to "false and misleading representations" Twitter made.

Twitter's Move Against Elon Musk's Withdrawal

Twitter has allegedly hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, along with its founding member, Martin Lipton, to prevent Musk from backing out of its plan of acquiring the company.

You may remember Musk announced he is backing out of his Twitter takeover on July 8, thanks to a filing made by his legal team to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Twitter made "false and misleading representations," which involves the number of fake accounts and bots on the microblogging platform and how it counts them. Musk's legal team is accusing Twitter of withholding information regarding the matter and misleading Musk.

Twitter refuted the allegations made by Musk's legal team, saying that the fake accounts only make up less than 5% of the app's total daily users. The company even turned over several data to Musk to prove their counterargument.

However, Musk's legal team stated in its SEC file that Twitter was "dramatically understating" the number of of fake accounts, adding that the preliminary analysis made by Musk's advisors on the provided data shows a higher number than what Twitter reported.

To prevent Musk from bailing on his takeover, Twitter hired two key lawyers for its team: William Savite, known for representing companies in the Delaware Court of Chancery against activist onvestors, and Leo Strine.

Strine was once the the Chancellor of the Delaware Chancry Court, with 20 years of experience as a judge in the state's courts. He eventually became the Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court before he joined the firm in 2020.

The quality of these key members shows how serious Twitter is from preventing Musk from breaking his end of the takeover deal.

Musk has allegedly hired Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, the people who previously defended Musk in his "pedo guy" defamation trial.

It Is Set In Stone

However, Musk may ultimately be compelled by law to complete the takeover deal he made with Twitter. The Guardian mentioned that Brian Quinn, an associate professor at tBoston College law school, said that Twitter would be likely to ask for a declaratory judgment that they are not in violation of the contract, as Musk makes them to be.

Quinn also expects the company to ask for an order from the court that Musk specifically perform his obligations under the agreement.

Additionally, he mentioned that Musk's arguments would probably fail in court because of the "unreasonable" evidence he would present.

John Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University, agrees with Quinn, saying that Musk is on "very weak legal grounds," and that Twitter gave him access to everything to satisfy his desire to know what he needs to know about the platform's bot percentage.

Despite Musk's apparent weak legal grounds, both parties could come up with a settlement than having Musk buy a company he no longer wants, according to Carl TObias, Williams chair in law at the University of Richmond.