Musk subpoenas former Twitter CEO and friend Jack Dorsey
New York (AP): Tesla CEO Elon Musk has subpoenaed his friend and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as part of an effort to back out of his USD 44 billion agreement to acquire the company Dorsey helped found, according to court documents.
Twitter and Musk are headed for an October 17 trial in Delaware that should determine whether or not Twitter can force the billionaire to go through with the acquisition.
Twitter has subpoenaed a host of tech investors and entrepreneurs connected to Musk, including prominent venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and David Sacks, the founding chief operating officer of PayPal.
Musk has claimed that Twitter failed to provide adequate information about the number of fake, or spam bot , Twitter accounts, and that it has breached its obligations under the deal by firing top managers and laying off a significant number of employees.
Musk's team expects more information about the bot numbers to be revealed in the trial court discovery process, when both sides must hand over evidence.
Twitter argues that Musk's reasons for backing out are just a cover for buyer's remorse. Shortly after Musk agreed to pay 38 per cent above Twitter's stock price, the stock market stumbled and shares of the electric-car maker Tesla, where most of Musk's personal wealth resides, lost more than USD 100 billion of their value.
The subpoena was served last week. It asks Dorsey for documents and communications related to the acquisition, as well as information on the effect of fake or spam accounts on Twitter's business and its measurement of daily active users.
A lawyer representing Dorsey did not immediately respond to a message for comment on Monday. (AP)
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Broken relationships don't automatically amount to abetment of suicide: SC
New Delhi (PTI): Broken relationships, while emotionally distressing, do not automatically amount to abetment of suicide in the absence of intention leading to the criminal offence, the Supreme Court on Friday said.
The observations came from a bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and Ujjal Bhuyan in a judgement, which overturned the conviction of one Kamaruddin Dastagir Sanadi by the Karnataka High Court for the offences of cheating and abetment of suicide under the IPC.
"This is a case of a broken relationship, not criminal conduct," the judgment said.
Sanadi was initially charged under Sections 417 (cheating), 306 (abetment of suicide), and 376 (rape) of the IPC.
While the trial court acquitted him of all the charges, the Karnataka High Court, on the state's appeal, convicted him of cheating and abetment of suicide, sentencing him to five years imprisonment and imposing Rs 25,000 in fine.
According to the FIR registered at the mother's instance, her 21-year-old daughter was in love with the accused for the past eight years and died by suicide in August, 2007, after he refused to keep his promise to marry.
Writing a 17-page judgement, Justice Mithal analysed the two dying declarations of the woman and noted that neither was there any allegation of a physical relationship between the couple nor there was any intentional act leading to the suicide.
The judgement therefore underlined broken relationships were emotionally distressing, but did not automatically amount to criminal offences.
"Even in cases where the victim dies by suicide, which may be as a result of cruelty meted out to her, the courts have always held that discord and differences in domestic life are quite common in society and that the commission of such an offence largely depends upon the mental state of the victim," said the apex court.
The court further said, "Surely, until and unless some guilty intention on the part of the accused is established, it is ordinarily not possible to convict him for an offence under Section 306 IPC.”
The judgement said there was no evidence to suggest that the man instigated or provoked the woman to die by suicide and underscored a mere refusal to marry, even after a long relationship, did not constitute abetment.
