- Elon Musk sues Twitter over severance payment made to former security chief Peiter Zatko.
- He claims Twitter did not tell him about the multi-million dollar severance package.
- Delaware court hearing the case will hold a five-day trial starting on October 17.
Elon Musk expanded his list of justifications for wanting to cancel his $44 billion agreement to acquire the social media site on Friday. One of them is a severance payment made by Twitter to a whistleblower.
According to a copy of the letter submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company was accused of failing to inform him about a multi-million dollar severance payment made in June to departing security chief Peiter Zatko, who later lodged a whistleblower complaint denouncing Twitter’s security practices.
According to Musk’s legal team, the failure to obtain his permission before paying Zatko provides even another legal justification for ending the April merger agreement he signed with Twitter.
Twitter disputed this.
“My friend seems to be arguing that Twitter should have gratuitously told Musk that there existed a disgruntled former employee who made various allegations that had been inquired upon and found to be without merit,” Twitter attorney William Savitt said earlier this week.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
An inquiry for comment on Twitter was not answered on Friday.
The claims made by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, that he was terminating the agreement because Twitter had deceived him about the number of bot accounts on its network have been refuted by the firm.
Musk might include August whistleblower revelations from Zatko, according to Kathaleen McCormick, chancellor of the Delaware court hearing the lawsuit, who issued a split decision earlier this week.
She rejected his plea to delay the lawsuit, claiming that doing so “would risk further harm to Twitter too great to justify.”
Since declaring in July that he was cancelling the acquisition of the firm after a difficult, tumultuous, months-long courting, Musk has been embroiled in a nasty legal dispute with Twitter.
The Delaware court is scheduled to hold the five-day trial starting on October 17.
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