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Current plan: I intend to resolve YES, because the situation appears to meet the common legal definitions of settlement - the parties made a binding agreement which resolves the dispute and results in voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit. And this aligns with both the text of the question and my original intent for the question.

I also will offer refunds to the NO holders via tips. There aren't many and their positions aren't that big - it's jfjurchen, Pepe, JfP, and some bots. This is because I don't think this is a very typical settlement scenario and most news publications do not describe it as a settlement - they don't say it isn't a settlement either, but it's outside the most typical examples of settlements and so just saying "they closed the deal" is clearer.

Ok, resolving now. Thanks for the discussion all!

I already tipped jfjurchen and v below, if anyone else wants to get a refund, make a comment and I'll tip it.

To summarize, so far I have heard the following views expressed:

• Myself: YES. I thought once the lawsuit was in progress, it would either end with the judge issuing a decision, or not, and I thought of the latter case as an out-of-court settlement. I personally think it counts as them "settling the lawsuit out of court" in the colloquial sense of the lawsuit is dealt with, outside of court. (I don't know if there's a specific technical meaning of settlement)

• J.F. Jurchen: NO. "I interpreted it as not including the case where the deal closes under the original terms without any concessions by twitter "

• BTE: NO. "Currently the lawsuit is on hold by the judge and remains hanging over Musk’s head if he doesn’t close. That is decidedly NOT a settlement of the suit"

  • Question: does the dismissal of the suit after close change anything in your mind? I'm guessing not.

• @v (NOT BOT): YES

Anyone else want to chime in? I'm also considering making a poll market to see if anyone else can give some insights.

At this point I am thinking of N/A resolution because both of these views appear very reasonable, and I don't think the question was written sufficiently clearly. But I'll still give it a couple days for more thoughts. (Next time, I'd write the criteria as something like "will the court issue a decision concluding the lawsuit" probably.

Another possibility: I could resolve YES and offer a refund to all NO holders.

Reason for this is that after studying legal interpretations of settlement, I am more convinced that this should be YES - see my comments below, and let me know what you think.

@jack FWIW I would not be upset if this resolved YES, even though I have a small NO position

https://sports.yahoo.com/deal-complete-twitter-musk-litigants-143720884.html "Deal complete, Twitter-Musk litigants ask judge to dismiss suit"

"Yesterday evening, Defendants and Twitter closed the transaction contemplated by the merger agreement dated April 25, 2022," said the October 28 letter from Musk's attorney in the case to Judge Kathaleen McCormick.

"In light of this development, Defendants and Twitter have agreed to dismiss their claims and counterclaims as set forth in the stipulation and proposed order of dismissal submitted with this letter."

No surprise here

I'll repeat my earlier link: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/settlement defines settlement as "An agreement that ends a dispute and results in the voluntary dismissal of any related litigation." They made an agreement to close the deal, and now they are seeking voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit.

Does that meet the definition, or is there some legal jargon meaning that I'm missing?

On the other hand, the media reporting is not calling it a settlement, which I think is an important signal about how people are typically interpreting the word.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_(litigation)#cite_note-:0-6 I got to this paper https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2398550 which says:

Although “settlement” might sound like a clear, simple
concept, there is no judicial definition uniformly used by the courts for what is a “settlement.”45

Footnote 45 says

For the purpose of this study, we used the definition of settlement as defined in the Dictionary of Conflict Resolution—an “agreement or arrangement ending a dispute.” See DOUGLAS YARN, DICTIONARY OF CONFLICT
RESOLUTION 392 (1999). This definition of settlement requires that the parties accept some solution and refrain from
further disputing the matter.

This aligns with the Cornell law definition. By my reading, Twitter and Musk closing the acquisition was an agreement ending the dispute. It also prevents further disputes by closing the deal that the lawsuit was trying to terminate.

Note that under this definition, one side unilaterally withdrawing the lawsuit would not count as a settlement, because it would not prevent future disputes. However, closing the deal is a binding agreement that does prevent future disputes, therefore it does count as settlement under this definition.

@v = NOT BOT

Result = YES

Now that the deal has closed, I intend to wait to see how the lawsuit is officially concluded and wait for any more comments on the question about the meaning of "settled out of court" below.

If Musk does close on schedule, I would consider that as they did settle and therefore YES resolution.

@jack I don’t think that matches with the description. Currently the lawsuit is on hold by the judge and remains hanging over Musk’s head if he doesn’t close. That is decidedly NOT a settlement of the suit, it’s leveraging the suit to pressure him and will not be resolved in any way. In fact, Twitter has explicitly rejected a settlement.

Hmm. You have a point, I'm not sure about the definitions here.

If the lawsuit is dismissed because it is mooted by the deal closing, that might be different from settlement.

On the other hand, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/settlement defines settlement as "An agreement that ends a dispute and results in the voluntary dismissal of any related litigation." They made an agreement to close the deal, and if they execute on that agreement and it results in the voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit, that would seem to meet this definition.

Anyone else have thoughts one way or the other? I think it's best for me to close the market while this discussion takes place, and I'll reopen it once it's decided (if the deal hasn't closed by then).

Some of the factors I am thinking about here:

• How did most readers/traders interpret the question?

• Will news articles describe the lawsuit as settled or something else?

• Is there a clear legal definition of settlement?

I interpreted it as not including the case where the deal closes under the original terms without any concessions by twitter

@jfjurchen Isn't there a "concession" by Twitter in that they're agreeing not to sue him for lost interest over his shenanigans?

@MartinRandall Or I suppose in theory they could try to sue Musk for their legal fees? But it's all very theoretical because once Musk owns Twitter, such a lawsuit boils down to Musk paying damages to himself :)

FWIW, my thinking was roughly, once the lawsuit was in progress, it would either end with the judge issuing a decision, or not, and I thought of the latter case as an out-of-court settlement. I didn't really consider the specific case where they just closed the deal and made the lawsuit go away without doing anything else, but I personally think it counts as them "settling the lawsuit out of court" in the colloquial sense of the lawsuit is dealt with, outside of court. (I don't know if there's a specific technical meaning of settlement)

Another note, I did say it would be NO "if the deal closes without any lawsuits being a decisive factor" but in my view the lawsuit was indeed a decisive factor

I want to ask the traders: do you interpret settlement as including settlement during the appeals process after Delaware Chancery Court issued a decision? I did not make that clear when I originally created this question, my intent was to ask about settlements before Delaware Chancery Court issued a decision but could change it if that's not what people expected.