Twitter hired a lawyer. The firm reportedly hired Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, whose founding partner, Martin Lipton, is credited with creating the shareholder rights plan or “poison pill” defense that Twitter initially used to thwart Musk’s attempted takeover and whose firm is notable enough to have its own Wikipedia page.
Elon Musk submitted a letter on Friday in an effort to revoke his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. Bret Taylor, the CEO of Twitter, responded by tweeting that the firm would take legal action to complete the transaction as planned. According to Bloomberg, Twitter may be serious about presenting its case in the Delaware Court of Chancery if it hired Wachtell Lipton.
Musk declined to accept questions at a Saturday address at the Sun Valley Conference, but he did respond on Twitter.
Two important lawyers were added to the Twitter team. One is William Savitt, who has defended businesses like Anthem and Sotheby’s from activist investors in the Delaware court. The other is Leo Strine, a former Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court and former Chancellor of the Delaware Chancery Court with 20 years of experience as a judge in the state’s courts. He joined the company in 2020.
Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, which has also been given the Wikipedia treatment and may be more well-known to Verge readers, is reportedly the firm Musk has chosen. Previously, it defended Musk in his “pedo guy” defamation case as well as the legal repercussions of his “funding secured” tweet about taking Tesla private in cases against the SEC and an ongoing shareholder lawsuit. It also handled Samsung’s defense against Apple’s patent lawsuit alleging that the Galaxy devices were merely a copycat of the iPhone.
