By Matthew Field

Twitter has been granted a fast-track hearing in its attempt to force Elon Musk to complete his $44bn takeover, after accusing the Tesla billionaire of harming the company “every hour of every day”.

Delaware judge Kathaleen McCormick ruled in favour of Twitter on Tuesday, setting a trial date for October. Mr Musk’s lawyers had attempted to push the trial back to next year. 

Twitter will argue Mr Musk should be forced to go through with his takeover, which was agreed in April but collapsed earlier this month.

Mr Musk walked away after claiming Twitter had failed to make appropriate disclosures about the number of fake accounts on the site.

Lawyers for the social media company on Tuesday accused Mr Musk of “conjuring an exit ramp” by claiming the company was misleading investors.

Mr Musk has claimed that Twitter’s reported number of “bots”, or spam accounts, is too low. Twitter has said roughly 5pc of accounts on the site are bots. Mr Musk has claimed the true figure is closer to 20pc.

During a Zoom hearing in the Chancery Court of Delaware, Twitter said it did not matter how many bots were on the site and argued Mr Musk was required to complete the merger. 

Bill Savitt, a partner at the firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, said Mr Musk “began to have second thoughts” about the deal and has since “pretended to continue to try to complete” the merger. 

The lawyer for Twitter said Mr Musk issued spurious requests for data that Twitter was not obliged to provide, while attempting to “sabotage” the takeover by attacking Twitter in public.

In response, Mr Musk’s lawyers from the firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan claimed Twitter had given the billionaire “the runaround” after he asked for data about bot accounts on the site.

Twitter had demanded a “completely unjustifiable schedule” for the trial, they claimed, which they argued would require each side to sift through huge amounts of data.

Twitter is trying to force Mr Musk to go through with his offer of $54.20 per share, far above its current share price of around $40. Twitter’s shares rose 3pc in early trading on Tuesday after the granting of a court date later this year.

Elon Musk still owns around 9pc of Twitter. The company’s lawyers claimed the billionaire had continued to use powers provided by the merger deal to hold up Twitter’s normal business activities. 

Andrew Rossman, of Quinn Emanuel, added: “The idea Mr Musk is trying to damage the company is preposterous.”

The case continues.