Twitter has sued. The company reportedly hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a firm notable enough to have its own Wikipedia page, and a founding partner, Martin Lipton, credited with inventing the shareholder rights plan, or “poison pill” defense that Twitter originally put on the brakes on Musk’s attempted buyout.
On Friday, Elon Musk filed a document to try to reverse his $44 billion takeover of Twitter. In response, Twitter chairman Bret Taylor tweeted that the company would take legal action to complete the deal as agreed. The hiring of Wachtell Lipton, as reported by Bloomberg, suggests Twitter is serious about pursuing his case in the Delaware Court of Chancery.
Twitter hired two key lawyers to join its team. One is William Savitt, who has represented companies like Anthem and Sotheby’s in Delaware court against activist investors. The other is Leo Strine, a former Registrar of the Delaware Chancery Court with 20 years of experience as a judge in state courts, most recently as Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court before joining the firm in 2020.
Musk reportedly hired Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, who also got the Wikipedia treatment and may be better known to Verge readers. It handled Samsung’s defense against Apple’s patent lawsuit alleging the Galaxy devices were merely clones of the iPhone, and has previously defended Musk in his “pedo-type” defamation case and the fallout from his “secured funding” tweet above taking Tesla privately defends in cases against the SEC and an ongoing shareholder lawsuit.