Elon Musk has lost a bid to delay Twitter’s lawsuit after a Delaware judge set a court date for October, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.
The suit, filed last week in Delaware’s Court of Chancery, seeks to force the $44 billion sale that the media mogul attempted to back out of earlier this month.
According to the AP, Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the head judge of Delaware’s Court of Chancery said that “delay threatens irreparable harm.”
“The longer the delay, the greater the risk,” McCormick said.
In April, Twitter agreed to Musk’s $44 offer to buy the company, sparking controversy regarding what the media mogul’s leadership might mean for the app.
Following the deal’s announcement, Media Matters for America, a liberal non-profit watchdog group, warned that Musk’s ownership “will open the floodgates of misinformation, hate and lies.”
However, on July 8, Musk tried to call off the sale claiming in an SEC filing that the social media company had failed to provide data he requested on the total number of spam and fake accounts on the platform. In response, Twitter’s board chairman Bret Taylor tweeted its commitment “to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk” and threatened “to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement.”
Following the Tesla CEO’s announcement, Twitter sued Musk for calling off the $44 billion sale of the company. The suit aims to “compel Musk to fulfill his legal obligations, and to compel consummation of the merger upon satisfaction of the few outstanding conditions.”