Twitter lawyers up to sue Musk on broken buyout deal; stock sinks 8%

Twitter Inc. shares tumbled Monday after Elon Musk walked away from his $44 billion deal to buy the company, setting the scene for a disruptive legal battle.

The shares dropped 8.8% to $33.59 as of 12 p.m., on track to erase about $2.5 billion in market value, after Musk backed out of an agreement to buy the social-media giant and take it private. Shares in Tesla Inc., the electric carmaker that Musk leads, fell about 6.3%. 

Twitter shares have been trading well below the $54.20-per-share offer Musk made in April. The billionaire alleges that Twitter misrepresented user data, saying the number of