Lawyers To Grill Elon Musk On His Ploy To Nix Twitter Deal

Billionaire Elon Musk's tendency to dish out insults while being questioned under oath will be tested anew on Monday, when lawyers for Twitter Inc. are due to interview the Tesla Inc CEO about his abrupt decision in July to ditch his $44 billion deal for the social media company, Tom Hals reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: Musk wants a judge to allow him to walk away without penalty, while Twitter wants an order forcing him to buy the company for $54.20 per share.

The high-stakes Twitter interview is closed to the public and scheduled to begin Monday and run into Wednesday, if needed, according to court records.

Musk's lawyers will want to keep him focused on answering questions, but that can be a challenge with such a smart and opinionated witness, said James Morsch, a corporate litigator who is not involved in the court battle.

"I would compare it to trying to hold a tiger by his tail," said Morsch.

In a 2019 deposition in litigation over Tesla's takeover of solar-panel maker SolarCity, Musk refused five times to answer one of the initial questions because of the way it was worded, the transcript shows.

"We can stare at each other until you rephrase it," Musk told opposing attorney Randall Baron, according to a transcript. "I'll guess we'll just cancel this deposition," Baron responded. Baron suggested he would seek an order from the judge directing Musk to answer questions, which seemed to get things moving.

Twitter's attorneys are expected to use the interview to try to show that Musk abandoned the deal due to falling financial markets and not because the company misled him about the real number of users or hid security flaws, as he alleged. Musk wants a judge to allow him to walk away without penalty, while Twitter wants an order forcing him to buy the company for $54.20 per share.

Twitter's stock ended up 0.4% at $41.58 on Friday. A five-day trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 17 in Wilmington, Delaware, Hyunjoo Jin also reported for Reuters.

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