Twitter v. Elon Musk, et al.

Analysis Group was retained by counsel for Twitter in its widely publicized litigation against Elon Musk and his companies in connection with his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. Seeking initially to terminate the deal, Mr. Musk alleged that the company made material misrepresentations regarding the number of spam and false accounts on the platform. He later claimed that Twitter made material misrepresentations regarding its information security and data privacy practices, and that Twitter failed to operate its business in the ordinary course after his offer when it made payments to a whistleblower who made allegations about the company’s data security. Finally, Mr. Musk alleged that Twitter was in noncompliance with its obligations under a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) consent decree. Twitter filed suit in the Delaware Chancery Court, seeking to force Mr. Musk to complete the acquisition.

More than 75 Analysis Group consultants across its North American and European offices assisted Twitter’s counsel in the litigation – supporting a wide variety of experts, consulting on depositions, and analyzing the defendants’ data science analyses. The firm’s teams were led by Managing Principals Maureen Chakraborty, Michael Cliff, Mark Howrey, Lisa Pinheiro, and Richard Starfield; Principals Laura Comstock, Chris Feige, and Jimmy Royer; and Vice Presidents Jonathan Borck, Juliette Caminade, Anne Catherine Faye, and Ben Samuels.

Our expert support work included the following:

FALSE AND SPAM ACCOUNTS

• Professor Christopher Bail of Duke University critiqued the opposing expert’s manual and AI-based analyses of the number of false or spam accounts on the Twitter platform.
• Matthew Cutts, former head of webspam at Google, opined on Twitter’s process for identifying and counting the number of false or spam accounts on the platform.
• Professor Catherine Tucker of the MIT Sloan School of Management opined on the long-term determinants of Twitter’s growth and the relevance of monetizable daily active users and false and spam accounts.

INFORMATION SECURITY AND PRIVACY

• Alex Stamos of Stanford University and Jerry Perullo of the Georgia Institute of Technology evaluated the allegations of the whistleblower that Twitter’s information and data security, and privacy controls, were severely lacking.

ORDINARY COURSE OF BUSINESS

• David Gordon of FW Cook Advisors evaluated whether the settlement payment Twitter made to the whistleblower was a “severance or termination payment” not made in the ordinary course of business.

CONSENT DECREE

• Harriet Pearson, former chief privacy officer at IBM, assessed whether Twitter violated its FTC consent decree and evaluated the potential penalties Twitter could face as a result of such violations.

One day before a judge-imposed deadline to close the transaction, Mr. Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter at the agreed-upon price of $44 billion.