Elon Musk has failed in an attempt to delay a trial over his termination of a $44bn (£38bn) deal to buy Twitter.
A Delaware judge, Kathleen St. J. McCormick ruled on Wednesday that the case would go ahead from 17 October after deciding that Musk’s request to push it into November would damage Twitter’s business.
In July, Twitter sued Musk, who is also chief executive of Tesla, to hold him to his April agreement to buy the company for $54.20 a share.
The company has alleged that Musk got cold feet over the deal as global markets turned soon after the deal was signed and are demanding that he complete the deal on the agreed terms.
“I am convinced that even four weeks’ delay would risk further harm to Twitter,” wrote Kathaleen McCormick, of Delaware’s court of chancery, affirming that the trial would start next month.
However, McCormick ruled that Musk’s countersuit against Twitter, to be heard at the same time, could be expanded to include allegations from the whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko.
Zatko, a former head of security at Twitter, said in a complaint that the company was “grossly negligent in several areas of information security”.
He also alleged that Twitter lied to Musk about bot accounts – one of the key tenets of his argument for scrapping the deal.
“We are hopeful that winning the motion to amend takes us one step closer to the truth coming out in that courtroom,” said Alex Spiro, an attorney for Musk.
Musk’s legal team had argued in Delaware on Tuesday that justice demanded delaying the five-day trial so that Musk could investigate the claims by Zatko. Musk has argued that Zatko’s allegations constitute a “company material adverse effect” that substantially altered the business’s value and therefore rendered the deal invalid.
“We look forward to presenting our case in court beginning on October 17 and intend to close the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr Musk,” said a Twitter spokesperson.
Twitter said last month that Zatko’s statements were “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lack important context”.
Experts previously said the whistleblower’s complaint is unlikely to sway the case. Though, it could convince the social media company to settle with Musk for a lower purchase price.
“It’s certainly less than ideal for Twitter to have a former employee making claims like this now — and they raise Twitter’s risk in a general sense,” Matthew Schettenhelm, senior litigation analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, told Insider. “But when you dive into the details, they don’t give me a reason to think Musk has an edge in the Delaware case.”