Musk plans to skip deposition in Twitter-buyout lawsuit

Elon Musk won’t be showing up Thursday for a long-awaited deposition in Twitter Inc.’s lawsuit aimed at forcing him to go through with a $44 billion buyout of the company, according to people familiar with the matter.

The billionaire reversed course earlier this week and committed himself to consummating the $54.20-per-share offer for the popular social-media platform on its original terms. Even though the deal still may take months to close, a trial set for Oct. 17 is almost certain to be put on hold.

That means there’s no pressure for Musk to submit for pre-trial questioning about his complaints that Twitter executives hid the number of robot and spam accounts among the platform’s more than 230 million users.