Twitter’s attorneys argued that David Sacks’ main reason for trying to challenge a subpoena in their case against Elon Musk is because he said he would do so on a podcast, and in a Friday ruling, the judge was agree.
Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick (pdf):
In an apparent effort to keep Sacks’ promise to his podcast listeners, the newbies created the very burden they are now complaining about.
The request for destruction is rejected.
This concludes a side story of Twitter’s main event suing Elon Musk for attempting to get under their $44 billion acquisition deal after the company’s lawyers subpoenaed Sacks as “a potential investor in the merger trying to escape Musk.” .” Sacks is a venture capitalist and, along with Musk, is a member of the so-called “PayPal Mafia”, made up of the company’s former power players.
As Elizabeth Lopatto explained earlier this week, Sacks responded to the subpoena during an episode of his All-In podcastsaying, “I’m not involved in this, but they sent me the widest subpoena ever. It’s about 30 pages of requests. And now I have to hire a lawyer to destroy this thing.”
What happened next was described by Twitter’s lawyers in their motion to oppose the request: “That night, he tweeted a virtual middle finger at ‘Twitter’s lawyers,’ then a video of a man urinating on a subpoena while he shouted expletives to a cheering crowd.”
While that strategy may work if you want a little internet power, it didn’t help his cause. Twitter’s attorneys have filed additional subpoenas for Delaware and California, and attorneys representing Sacks based their nullification request on an argument that the move placed an unnecessary burden on him.
Judge McCormick concluded that Twitter had “founded concerns” based on Sacks’ own actions and declined his request. “In other circumstances, I might view full double subpoenas for such tactical purposes as problematic. Where, like here, the subpoena receiver tweets the subpoena attorneys the middle finger and a video of someone peeing on subpoenas, I’m less bothered by that,” McCormick writes.
