17 minutes ago
Elon Musk has taken legal action to summon Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey to appear in court as part of his legal battle with the tech company.
Musk, the owner of electric car company Tesla, is seeking to cancel his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, after claiming that the company failed to provide enough information about the size of the fake accounts on the social networking site.
But Twitter is suing Musk to try to force him to complete the purchase of the site.
The case will be heard in Delaware, US, in October unless the parties decide to settle out of court in advance.
Twitter hopes Judge Musk – the world’s richest man – will complete the acquisition at the agreed-upon price of $54.20 per share.
But as part of preparations for the trial, Mr Musk’s lawyers called his friend, former Twitter chief Dorsey, hoping to help support the Tesla boss’s argument that the social media company was not being honest about the amount of fake accounts on its platform.
A legal summons order or document requires a person to be summoned before the court or orders evidence, such as records or documents, to be submitted to the court.
In July, US billionaire Musk said he intended to withdraw from his deal to buy Twitter, prompting the company to sue him.
Mr Musk accused Twitter of withholding information about the fake accounts, but the company argued that these were excuses to cover up the buyer’s remorse for his offer.
Twitter has issued legal subpoenas, for its part, to people who planned to invest in the deal with Mr. Musk.
photo released, Archyde.com
Jack Dorsey is the co-founder of Twitter
Dorsey resigned as Twitter’s CEO in November last year, tweeting in support of Mr. Musk when he announced his bid to buy the company in April, saying: “Elon is the only solution I can trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness “.
Last month, a US judge ruled that Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk should go to trial in October.
Earlier this August, Musk sold another 7.92 million Tesla shares, worth about $6.88 billion, indicating that he needed the money in case he was forced to buy Twitter.
Mr. Musk filed a counter-lawsuit on Twitter, claiming that a third of the visible Twitter accounts his team evaluated were fake. Using this number, the team estimated that at least 10 percent of the site’s daily active users are bots that tweet automatically.
But documents provided by his legal team in its battle with Twitter have been called into question, by prominent bot researchers.
Twitter says it estimates that less than 5 percent of its daily active users are fake accounts, run by bots.