Elon Musk suffered a major setback in his legal battle with Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) in the first round, with Twitter granted an expedited trial.
Musk now faces a showdown with Twitter in a Delaware Chancery Court this October, though the world's richest man wanted the date pushed back to February 2023.
Twitter wants the billionaire to be tried in court as soon as possible for his April promise to buy the company for US$44bn (£37bn).
After Musk said he wanted to walk away from the deal as he had been misled about the number of bots on the platform, Twitter sued Musk last week, claiming the tech billionaire is obligated to complete his US$44bn acquisition of the social network.
"It became clear Musk was never going to take 'yes' for an answer," lawyer Bill Savitt, representing Twitter, told media.
"Twitter can manage this and will manage this, but the company is faced with a substantial increase in risk … quite by Mr Musk’s design."
"The issue in this case is not - and it can’t be - how many false accounts there may be on Twitter," Savitt said, adding that the agreement doesn't even mention spam, bots, or false accounts. "It could have, but it doesn't."
"We candidly suspect that Musk wants to keep Twitter under massive pressure to wear Twitter down, run out the clock or increase his leverage", Savitt concluded.
Musk's legal representative, Andy Rossman, reaffirmed Musk's claims about bots and spam on the platform by saying "billions of actions on the platform need to be analysed".
Rossman also claimed Twitter provided Musk with "obfuscation" and "delays", adding a "non-working replica of the fire hose" was provided by Twitter that was more difficult to use.
The court complaint included Musk's tweets, including one where he replied to Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal's explanation of bots on the platform with the poop emoji.
Musk's lawyer argued that Twitter "didn’t claim that Musk’s tweets, which they now say are a breach of the merger agreement, were a breach, until after we issued a termination letter".
Among the conditions of the deal was that Musk would not disparage Twitter or its representatives.