Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal are both seeking to reschedule their pre-trial questioning, according to people familiar with the matter, a move that has sparked speculation that they may be in out-of-court settlement talks.
Elon Musk and Agrawal were scheduled to be questioned by opposing counsel on Monday, local U.S. time. Elon Musk’s questioning was scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. at a law firm in Wilmington, Delaware, court documents show. Agrawal’s questioning, meanwhile, was scheduled to take place at a San Francisco law firm.
However, Agrawal wants to reschedule his questioning for later this week, a date yet to be determined, according to people familiar with the matter and Elon Musk wants to hold his questioning somewhere other than Delaware. Typically, such questionings tend to change dates or locations several times for the convenience of the parties to legal disputes and their lawyers.
Representatives for Twitter and Elon Musk’s legal team both declined to comment on the matter. However, the sudden change in the questioning date between Agrawal and Elon Musk has sparked speculation that the parties may be in out-of-court settlement talks.
The trial in the lawsuit is set to begin on Oct. 17 and will last five days. Delaware Court of Chancery Justice Kathaleen St. J. McCormick must rule on whether Elon Musk has just cause to abandon his deal to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share.
Both Elon Musk and Twitter have issued numerous subpoenas to obtain testimony and other evidence about the number of bots and spam accounts on the latter platform. Elon Musk claims Twitter lied to him about the true number of users on the platform, while the latter claims it was an excuse for Elon Musk to abandon the deal.
Judge McCormick will hold a hearing Tuesday local time on several disputes over pretrial information exchange, such as whether Bruce Falck, who is in charge of Twitter’s product revenue, must testify.
