The lawsuit alleges Musk purposely worked to lower Twitter’s stock value.

In the last several weeks, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that his profilic bid to buy out social media platform Twitter would be delayed, citing concerns about a bot account problem on the platform. Musk’s announcement of the delay, as well as his concerns about the platform, caused major losses in Twitter stock value, and according to a new coalition of Twitter shareholders, this was not a coincidence.

A lawsuit against Musk was filed this week in a federal district court in San Francisco by a group of Twitter shareholders. According to their complaint, following Musk’s announcement of the Twitter buyout, he “proceeded to make statements, send tweets, and engage in conduct designed to create doubt about the deal and drive Twitter’s stock down substantially in order to create leverage that Musk hoped to use to either back out of the purchase or re-negotiate the buyout price.”

“As detailed herein, Musk’s conduct was and continues to be illegal, in violation of the California Corporations Code, and contrary to the contractual terms he agreed to in the deal,” the complaint adds.

The shareholders are seeking damages from Musk to alleviate their losses incurred from lowered stock values. Additionally, the case is seeking injunctive relief, which could force Musk to go through with the Twitter deal at the price he originally agreed to, regardless of current stock values or external concerns.

Neither Twitter nor Musk have commented on the lawsuit at the time of writing.