Musk's 'Absurdly Broad' Twitter User Data Requests Largely Dismissed By Delaware Judge

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk wanted Twitter Inc TWTR to hand over data amounting to trillions of data points, but the demand was largely turned down by a judge on Thursday.

What Happened: Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware's Court of Chancery said Musk’s demands were “absurdly broad” and that “no one in their right mind has ever tried to undertake such an effort,” reported Reuters.

McCormick said that her impression was that Twitter had agreed to produce a “tremendous amount of information” to Musk and that the information plaintiff has agreed to produce is "sufficiently broad" to satisfy most of its obligations.

See Also: How To Buy Twitter (TWTR) Shares

Why It Matters: The Jack Dorsey-founded social media platform has been ordered to turn over 9,000 accounts sampled in a fourth-quarter audit to estimate the number of spam or bot users, reported Reuters.

Twitter said the data was not available anymore and it would be burdensome to recreate it. McCormick has given the company two weeks to produce it, as per the report.

“We look forward to reviewing the data Twitter has been hiding for many months,” said Alex Spiro, an attorney for Musk, according to Reuters. 

Why It Matters: In early July, Musk backed out of the deal to purchase Twitter for $44 billion, saying that multiple data requests made by him to Twitter over several months were either ignored or rejected, or the data provided was incomplete.

The same month, Twitter sued Musk to force a buyout in the Delaware Court of Chancery, saying the entrepreneur had refused to “honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interest.”

The trial is to run five days and is scheduled for Oct. 17, according to Reuters.

Price Action: On Thursday, Twitter shares closed 0.8% higher at $41.13 in the regular session and gained 0.3% in extended trading. On the same day, Tesla shares closed 0.35% lower at $296.07 in the regular session and fell 0.1% after-hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

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