Four former Twitter executives filed a lawsuit Monday against current owner Elon Musk, accusing him of withholding more than $128 million in severance pay after firing him when he took the job.
of lawsuit It was brought in by Parag Agrawal, the company’s former chief executive officer. Ned Segal, the company’s former chief financial officer. Vijaya Gadde, the company’s head of legal, policy and trust; and Sean Egit, the company’s acting general counsel.
When Musk bought Twitter, he fired all four plaintiffs and changed the company’s name to X. The company is currently seeking payment of severance pay, attorney’s fees and interest.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that the executives’ contracts stated they were entitled to severance pay if Twitter ceased to be a public company. The complaint says Musk did not pay the company when he took it private in October 2022.
The complaint points to a passage in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk in which Musk explains to Isaacson a strategy to avoid paying severance payments by fabricating “great causes.”
The lawsuit alleges that the plaintiffs lobbied shareholders against Musk’s “unreasonable attempt to renege on the transaction” of acquiring Twitter, which infuriated Musk. The suit quotes Musk from his biography as saying that he would “hunt down every single executive and board member ‘until the day comes.'”
“Mr. Musk’s own words indicate that he concocted a cause and fired the plaintiffs to avoid paying the benefits he was required to pay under the plan.” As quoted above, Musk He confirmed to biographer Isaacson that a plan was in the works: Mr. Musk engineered a shutdown and layoff plan as an excuse to cut off the plaintiffs’ retirement benefits, exact revenge, and save his own money. He fabricated a cause for the specific purpose of terminating Plaintiffs and interfering with their right to benefits under the Plan.
“Musk decided he did not want to pay the plaintiffs severance pay, so he fired them without cause, fabricated a false cause, and hired employees at various of his companies to support his decision,” the suit states. “A member has been appointed,” it says. “In his termination letter, he alleged that each plaintiff committed ‘gross negligence’ and ‘willful misconduct,’ but he did not cite any facts to support this claim,” the suit says. There is.
The Hill has reached out to a representative for San Francisco-based X for comment.
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