Elon Musk’s lawyers try to slow down the progress of Twitter’s lawsuit

Elon Musk’s legal team has responded to Twitter’s lawsuit against him, saying that the company is demanding an unreasonably fast trial. In response, Musk’s team asks that the case not be heard until next year, according to Bloomberg.

Twitter has pushed for the trial to take place in mid-September, justifying the request to expedite things given that Musk and Twitter’s merger agreement has an October 24th “presumptive drop-dead date.” However, Musk’s team is asking that the trial not be held until February 13th, 2023 trial at the earliest, Bloomberg reports.

Twitter declined to comment on the matter, and pointed to its initial complaint filed Tuesday.

Twitter sued Musk earlier this week after he officially tried to bail on his $44 billion agreement to buy the company. Nearly immediately after he said he intended to pull the plug, Twitter board chairman Bret Taylor said the company would be taking Musk to court, and the company filed its lawsuit on Tuesday. Musk hadn’t responded via the court until Friday, though on Tuesday, he did tweet.

Musk’s primary assertion for wanting to terminate the merger is that Twitter has not given him the data to “‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,” his legal team wrote last week. His team again invoked the bots issue in Friday’s filing. According to The Wall Street Journal, they said that “the core dispute over false and spam accounts is fundamental to Twitter’s value. It is also extremely fact and expert intensive, requiring substantial time for discovery.”

There will be a 90-minute hearing next week on July 19th at 11AM ET to decide when the trial will take place, according to Bloomberg and Reuters.