Twitter sues Elon Musk after termination of $44B acquisition deal

Twitter sued billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday in a bid to force him to complete the purchase of the social media firm.

The legal action in a Delaware court came days after the Tesla CEO announced that he was terminating his $44 billion deal to buy the microblogging giant.

"Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away," Twitter said in its lawsuit.

"Twitter brings this action to enjoin Musk from further breaches, to compel Musk to fulfill his legal obligations, and to compel consummation of the merger upon satisfaction of the few outstanding conditions," said the lawsuit.

The company asked the court to order Musk to complete the merger at the agreed $54.20 per Twitter share.

Musk pulled out of the deal late last Friday with multiple reasons, including that Twitter allegedly undercounts the number of spam accounts on its service.

He alleged in his Friday termination letter that Twitter misrepresented user data, claiming the number of spam bots on the social media platform is much higher than the company has disclosed.

Twitter dismissed that claim, stating that the number of bots was well under 5% of its total daily active users.