It was in great demand, although it took almost a year and a half to arrive. Twitter's former bosses, including CEO Parag Agrawal, had multimillion-dollar termination protections when Elon Musk bought the social network, which he later used in a masterful move to expedite the completion of the operation and fire them accordingly. Now Agrawal and four other directors are demanding compensation of $128.6 million (around €119 million) from the owner of the social network in a lawsuit before a California court.
The four plaintiffs are Agrawal; Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal; Head of Legal and Content Moderation, Vijaya Gadde, and General Counsel, Sean Edgett. Firing the four was the first decision Musk made when he took control of Twitter. These executives had played a crucial role in the legal battle against Elon Musk to force him to buy the social network when he tried to get out with all sorts of baseless excuses.
The operation's brochure already noted the shielding, or “golden parachutes,” as the document called it, of several senior leaders. In the lawsuit, Agrawal is seeking $57.4 million; Segal at $44.5 million; Gadde, 20 million, and Edgett, 6.8 million. Sarah Personette, client manager, who had another 20 million in protection, was not involved in the first round of layoffs, nor is she a party to the lawsuit. The four plaintiffs are therefore seeking outstanding damages of $128.6 million, plus other appropriate damages, plus interest, and plus attorneys' fees.
The lawsuit is a clear description of Musk's capricious and tyrannical way of doing business. The former executives say that after taking over the social network in 2022, the tycoon showed “particular anger” at them by publicly promising to withhold their compensation in order to reap about $200 million from the $44 billion deal. operation, according to the Northern California lawsuit filed Monday in federal court. The reason: “They adequately and vigorously represented the interests of public Twitter shareholders during Musk’s illegal attempt to breach the agreement.” For his efforts, Musk promised a lifetime of revenge,” say lawyers for Agrawal and the other formers executives in the 39-year-old lawsuit to which EL PAÍS had access.
“Under Musk’s control, Twitter has become a criminal, defrauding employees, landlords, suppliers and others. “Musk doesn’t pay his bills, believes the rules don’t apply to him, and uses his wealth and power to put down anyone who disagrees with him,” they add.
The lawsuit echoes the description of the takeover in Walter Issacson's Musk biography, which portrayed the company's early closure as a masterstroke to avoid paying compensation. “While finalizing the acquisition, Musk told his official biographer Walter Isaacson that he would pursue “every single one” of Twitter’s executives and directors “until they die.” These statements were not mere rants from a selfish billionaire surrounded by people unwilling to face the legal consequences of their own decisions. “Musk explicitly bragged to Isaacson that he planned to cheat Twitter executives out of their severance pay to save himself $200 million.”
They point out that “if anyone close to Musk had been willing to tell him the truth, they would have learned that it was his plan.” [de adelantar el cierre de la operación y despedirles como despido procedente antes de que dimitieran por cambio de control] Denying plaintiffs their contractual damages was a futile effort that would not stand up to legal scrutiny.”
They represent that the “cause” for proper dismissal in compensation plans is limited to very limited circumstances, such as conviction of a serious felony or the commission of gross negligence or willful misconduct. But “board-approved business decisions that Musk doesn’t like” from before he owned the company don’t serve as a legitimate reason.
Early December Also in December, a judge in San Francisco refused to pay them 50% of the planned amounts.
Other legal fronts
The legal fronts are multiplying for Elon Musk after he suffered a setback when a judge canceled a record compensation package of up to $56 billion that the CEO had allocated to Tesla through the board. Now the lawyers who succeeded in overturning that package have asked the judge to award them $5.6 billion in company shares in legal fees, equivalent to 10% of the lawsuit's total. If approved, it would be the largest settlement of its kind. Lawyers in cases related to the Enron bankruptcy collected a record $688 million in legal fees in 2008. Lawyers say the sum was justified because they would not have been paid if they had lost and Tesla's benefit from canceling the compensation package was huge.”
Musk, for his part, filed a lawsuit last week against OpenAI, the company responsible for ChatGPT, its CEO Sam Altman and other high-ranking officials of the organization such as Greg Brockman (President of OpenAI) for abandoning the mission. Original from the company he co-founded: to selflessly and non-profitably contribute to the development of artificial intelligence (AI) for the benefit of humanity.
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