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It's a 140+ character hell, but a quartet of former Twitter executives' severance and benefits lawsuit against Elon Musk and X Corp sends a very clear message.
Give us the money you owe us!
That's a message totaling $128 million that former CEO Parag Agrawal, former CFO Ned Segal, former CLO Vijaya Gadde and former general counsel Sean Edgett are seeking in a lawsuit filed today in federal court in Northern California.
“Because Musk decided he did not want to pay plaintiffs the severance packages, he simply fired them without explanation, then made up a false reason and appointed employees from his various companies to uphold his decision,” the somewhat redacted notes read six lawsuits.
Read Twitter's former CEO, CFO, legal chief and general counsel's complaint against Elon Musk here.
Points to the “staggering number of lawsuits filed by its suppliers and service providers across a range of industries” and the increasing lawsuits filed by “thousands of non-executive former employees” against Musk and the social media platform since it was purchased by the unpredictable billionaire earlier than Twitter has been known to be under pressure for $44 billion in 2022, but the four executives are attacking Musk's MO when it comes to former employees and others. “This is Musk’s playbook: keep the money he owes others and force them to sue him,” they insist. “Even in defeat, Musk can impose delays, hassle and expense on others who can less afford it.”
To that end, the once-powerful tech bosses, represented by Sidley Austin's offices in San Francisco and Chicago, are using the oft-sued and oft-belligerent Musk's own words against him.
“Musk told his official biographer, Walter Isaacson, that he would 'hunt down every single 'Twitter executive and director' until his death,” the 38-page complaint says. “These statements were not mere chatter from a self-centered billionaire surrounded by movers and shakers unwilling to confront him with the legal consequences of his own decisions. “Musk specifically bragged to Isaacson that he planned to cheat Twitter executives out of their severance pay to save himself $200 million.”
The needle in the haystack here is that Agrawal, Segal, Gadde and Edgett all had “good cause” clauses in their respective contracts that guaranteed them a full payout in the event that something like Twitter ceases to be “a publicly traded company.” to be “ – as happened on Twitter in October 20222. These clauses appear to have been overlooked by Musk and his henchmen when they showed Agrawal (who was the only one to accept a $60 million golden handshake), Segal, Gadde and Edgett the door.
After spending the day expressing his dismay at the immigration statistics and his joy at the recent launch of Space Representatives
If Musk or X have anything to say about today's complaint, this post will be updated.