Twitter vs. Musk: Twitter hires 'heavy hitter' legal representatives

Twitter reportedly hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz LLP following Elon Musk's decision to pull out of the $44 billion deal. The company is credited with having created the 'poison pill' strategy, a type of defensive tactic used by a corporation's board of directors in the occurrence of a hostile tender-based takeover.

Twitter hired two key lawyers for its team. William Savitt, who has represented companies like Anthem and Sotheby’s in the Delaware court against activist investors, and Leo Strine, a former Chancellor of the Delaware Chancery Court with 20 years of experience as a judge in the state’s courts, ending with a stint as the Chief Justice of its state Supreme Court before he joined the firm in 2020.

Musk himself will be represented by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, the same company which handled Samsung’s defense against Apple’s patent lawsuit, and has defended Musk previously in his “pedo guy” defamation case, as well as the aftermath of his “funding secured” tweet about taking Tesla private in cases against the SEC and an ongoing shareholder lawsuit.

The reason behind this is that Twitter is accused of delivering “false and misleading” information about the company. Twitter has repeatedly said in recent weeks that the number of fake accounts on its platform is less than 5%. Musk and his team believe that the network is lying and that this affects the viability of his business, therefore the value of the company itself. 

By ending his commitment to buy Twitter, Musk exposed himself to heavy legal proceedings. Both parties have pledged to pay severance pay of up to $1 billion.