Twitter hires law firm to sue Elon Musk; Musk takes dig over tweets

After Twitter Inc hired US law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz LLP to sue Elon Musk and force him to complete the $44-billion acquisition of the social media company, Musk took to Twitter with a series of memes and tweets to take a dig at the social media company.

While one of the memes had a chessboard - indirectly referring to an anticipated legal battle - another one read 'Chuckmate'. The third one had a meme that outlined how Twitter will now have to disclose the information about their bots in front of the court.



To make it worse for Twitter, its shares plummeted a little over 5%.

Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla, on Friday terminated his deal, saying Twitter had failed to provide information about fake accounts on the platform, after which Twitter's chairman, Bret Taylor, vowed a legal fight.

Twitter is planning to file a law suit early this week in Delaware, people familiar with the matter said.

Twitter declined to comment while the law firm did not immediately respond to queries from news agency Reuters.

Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz was one of the legal advisers for Musk's plan to take Tesla private in 2018. Musk tweeted that there was "funding secured" for a $72 billion deal to take Tesla private but did not move ahead with an offer.

Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million in civil fines, and Musk stepped down as Tesla's chairman to resolve US Securities and Exchange Commission claims that he defrauded investors.

Twitter's existing legal team includes Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.