Billionaire Elon Musk is being sued by 4 former Twitter executives who allege that the multi-CEO owes them $128 million in severance on account of wrongful termination. The previous staff say they have been fired instantly after Musk accomplished his $44 billion takeover of the social media firm in October 2022.
Amongst these searching for financial compensation are former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, former CFO Ned Segal, former Head of Authorized, Coverage and Belief at Twitter, Vijaya Gadde, and former Twitter Common Counsel Sean Edgett.
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The lawsuit was filed on Monday within the U.S. District Court docket for the Northern District of California, the place Twitter’s former HQ was.
The doc alleges that Musk fired the executives “with out cause” as a result of he did not wish to pay their advantages and made up a “pretend trigger” to get away with it, citing that Musk wrote the staff had dedicated “gross negligence” and “willful misconduct” with out proof supporting the claims.
“After Defendant Elon Musk definitively agreed to purchase Twitter, Inc. for $44 billion, the inventory market declined, and Musk tried to again out of the deal, regardless of having no authorized or contractual justification to take action. Twitter sued Musk to implement the deal, and over months of intensive litigation, every of Musk’s baseless excuses was stripped away,” the doc states. “Beneath Musk’s management, Twitter has turn out to be a scofflaw, stiffing staff, landlords, distributors, and others. Musk does not pay his payments, believes the principles do not apply to him, and makes use of his wealth and energy to run roughshod over anybody who disagrees with him.”
In typical Musk vogue, he cheekily responded to the allegations on X.
First, the billionaire posted a crying laughing emoji in response to a consumer who wrote: “Parag Agrawal is suing Elon Musk claiming that he did in actual fact get rather a lot achieved that week.”
?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 4, 2024
In a second response, Musk wrote “If the emoji matches” beneath a put up of Agrawal and a clown emoji.
If the emoji matches … ?♂️
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2024
This isn’t the primary Twitter severance lawsuit.
In July 2023, the billionaire was hit with a $500 million class motion lawsuit by former Twitter staff who claimed they weren’t paid the severance they have been promised, which was reportedly “two months of their base pay plus one week of pay for every full yr of service” upon being laid off.
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“There have been lots of people that did not appear to have loads of worth,” Musk stated final Could on the Wall Road Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London, concerning the mass layoffs and cuts instantly following his takeover of the corporate. “I feel there’s the likelihood for important cuts at different corporations with out affecting their productiveness, in actual fact rising their productiveness.”
