Companies couldn’t prove a MAC in the middle of the 08 housing crash, musk sure as hell wasn’t having screwed every legal argument he had available weeks in advance.
His options were buy now for 44 billion or buy maybe a month later for 44 billion plus whatever the court decided to tack on for hellishly bad faith dealing and arguments.
His legal team tried every truck available and even a lousy “well we said we’d buy it so they should drop the lawsuit “ play. The court saw right through and said “you get 4 weeks to buy and if not then the suit continues”
So they paid up because to claim you’re going to but then to not go through with it would have seen the most wrathfully phenomenal court proceeding in history.
Discovery was just an added bonus of embarrassment and very unlikely to be related at all. Every sound legal mind working for musk was probably screaming at him to shut up and eventually told him he was going to have to go through. The ONLY way this current situation could be worse is if he had continued to try and fight it after his last Hail Mary because that specific court exists almost solely to VERY quickly mitigate multi billion dollar deals and would absolutely make a very clear example out of anyone who thought they were too rich to touch.
Musk may be one of the most wealthy men in the world but Delaware deals with companies with MUCH higher net worth and resources constantly.