Accused of breaching Merger Contract with Musk, Twitter showed receipt that it did not

Written by legalpdf | Published 2022/11/25
Tech Story Tags: elon-musk | twitter | twitter-v.-elon-musk | breach-of-contract | mergers-and-acquisitions | firehose-data | lawsuit | billionaire

TLDRTwitter v. Elon Musk Court Filing July 12, 2022 is part of HackerNoon’s Legal PDF Series. Part 24 of 31: .FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS- Defendants purport to terminate the merger agreement - Twitter has not breached its information-sharing or cooperation covenantsvia the TL;DR App

Twitter v. Elon Musk Court Filing by Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP, July 12, 2022 is part of HackerNoon’s Legal PDF Series. You can jump to any part in this filing here. This is part 24 of 31 .


FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS

VIII. Defendants purport to terminate the merger agreement

A. Twitter has not breached its information-sharing or cooperation covenants

126. Twitter has provided defendants far more information than they are entitled to under the merger agreement. Section 6.4 serves the narrow purpose of giving Parent reasonable access to information necessary to close the merger. It does not give defendants a broad right to conduct post-signing due diligence of a kind they specifically forswore pre-signing. Much less does it give Musk the right to hunt for evidence supporting a bogus misrepresentation theory developed to try to torpedo the deal.

127. In any event, Twitter has bent over backwards to provide Musk the information he has requested, including, most notably, the full “firehose” data set that he has been mining for weeks — and has been continuing to mine since purporting to terminate — with the assistance of undisclosed data reviewers. Twitter has also spent weeks and dedicated considerable resources to compiling information responsive to Musk’s numerous other requests for custom reporting of user data. Musk and his representatives have received extensive data underlying Twitter’s process for estimating false or spam accounts as a percentage of mDAU, including the granular monthly reporting identifying each of the sampled accounts by “user id” and the determination as to whether the account was false or spam, along with the calculations supporting Twitter’s estimates, going back to January 1, 2021.

128. In their termination notice, defendants list categories of information they claim Twitter has withheld. Most of this information does not exist, has already been provided, or is the subject of requests only made recently, in response to which Twitter had been yet again compiling responsive information when it received the termination notice. All of this information sweeps far beyond what is reasonably necessary to close the merger. Defendants also complain about rate and query limits initially accompanying the firehose data. But those limits were part of the customary commercial terms defendants initially requested, and, as defendants acknowledge, Twitter increased the limits immediately upon request before the purported termination.

129. As to Twitter’s cooperation obligation under Section 6.11, the company has again gone well beyond what is required. The point of this provision is to assist Parent in furnishing the lenders and underwriters with information to facilitate syndication of the already-committed financing. Twitter is not obligated to provide financial information not already in existence, or to provide copies of its bankers’ valuation models, which are outside the company’s control. Parent, not Twitter, is responsible for providing the “prospects, projections and plans for the business and operations of” the company. Ex. 1 § 6.11.

130. Even so, in response to the request defendants lodged for the first time on June 17, Twitter made the extraordinary ask of its bankers to give Musk the final board deck they presented in connection with the merger. It furnished Musk with other financial information he requested. It did so even though Musk has cited no demand from any lender — and no reason related to any obligation under any relevant contract — that would support these requests. There has been no breach, and there would be none even if the state of Twitter’s cooperation remained the same at the end of the cure period.

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Published by HackerNoon on 2022/11/25