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Comment by cloutchaser | Hacker News Reader

The big question is something that Ben Thompson highlighted yesterday - if the court sides width Twitter, but Elon just refuses to pay, what happens? And Elon definitely believes he can play fast and loose with rules and laws, so it could happen.

It's going to be pretty hard for a court to enforce getting financing, and getting the merger through.

As far as I understand it this is possible. It could actually destroy the faith in the delaware courts if this happens. So Musk in a way has everyone over a barrel potentially, and everyone has something to lose.

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In principle he's the same as any other citizen. If you don't do as the court tells you, you're in contempt and can even be held in prison indefinitely if need be.

It would be a very interesting test of the US state machinery, which maintains there are no all-powerful oligarchs.

But to just play this game. Lets say he goes to prison until he complies. Are there any banks that would finance this deal then? What if they don't?

Is he kept in prison until he sells $44bn worth of tesla shares and pays cash for the deal?

It's a pretty interesting thought experiment.

I suspect with him in prison, the court could enforce the sale of his assets. I think the theoretical answer is, yes, the court can physically force cash transfer even if Musk refuses to cooperate. Prison is just a part of it (though I can't see Musk keen to explore that).

But then he's got expensive lawyers and so on, to me this is the interesting side of the thought experiment.

The banks are already committed to their part of the financing. The rest has to come from Musk, and the court could force him to come up with it.

> but Elon just refuses to pay, what happens? ... It's going to be pretty hard for a court to enforce getting financing, and getting the merger through.

This wouldn't be hard. It's not like Musk is sitting on a big pile of dollar bills that he can keep the court from grabbing. All of Musk's assets are at banks, and banks are very happy to follow a court order.

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