Should the Courts Force Elon Musk Buy Twitter?

When Elon Musk first made his offer to buy Twitter, I stated that this is an amazing opportunity for Twitter but a terrible one for Elon Musk. Twitter just is not a good business. They aren't profitable. They struggle to increase revenue. They struggle to increase users. This is just not a good business. However, Elon Musk did make an offer to buy Twitter at a nice premium for Twitter shareholders. Now, however, Elon Musk wants out of the deal. Twitter does not want Elon to get out of the deal, so they are taking him to court to try and force him to buy the company. In this article, I want to answer the question, should the courts force Elon Musk to Buy Twitter?

When Twitter accepted Elon Musk's offer for the company, a contract was signed. Now, Elon Musk does not want to buy Twitter. The issue is that situations like this are the sole reason that contracts exist in the first place. The contract is signed so that neither party can go back on their word. Elon Musk stating that he no longer wants to buy Twitter doesn't change the fact that he signed a contract to buy Twitter. It is the court's job to uphold that contract. 

Many people have been mentioning how there's a one billion dollar breakup fee in place for the deal. This means that Elon Musk can get out of the deal by paying one billion dollars to cancel the deal right? No. I feel like there is a lot of misconceptions going around about this breakup fee. This fee does not give Elon Musk the ability to back out of the deal for any reason and just pay a billion dollars. What it actually was for was if Elon could not secure financing for the Twitter deal, he would have to pay one billion dollars. He did secure financing so the one billion dollar breakup fee is not relevant.

The only real shot Elon Musk has is proving that some kind of fraud was done on Twitter's side. It seems like he is going to try for this by saying that Twitter lied about the amount of bots on their platform. I've heard many people say that this is going to force Twitter to prove that the number of bots on their platform that they stated was the actual number, but this just isn't true. Twitter does not have to prove anything. Elon Musk is the one making the claim that Twitter has more than 5% bots. It is his job to prove that. He must show the evidence he gathered to arrive at that conclusion. The burden of proof is not on Twitter.

So, should the courts force Elon Musk to buy Twitter? Yes. It is their job to uphold the contract unless some kind of fraud on Twitter's part can actually be proven. Now, will the courts actually force Elon to buy it? Maybe. The court in particular that will be looking at this case is an advantage for Twitter as it is a court where billionaires have little sway. 

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