California Property Trust has lodged a complaint with the San Francisco County Superior Court this week, alleging that Twitter did not comply with an order to pay rent for its global offices. According to a report in the New York Times, Twitter paused paying rent in recent weeks in an effort to cut costs.
In addition to this complaint, Twitter is also confronting a lawsuit for failing to pay $197,725 for charter flights for CEO Elon Musk during his initial week at the company. It is heard that Musk brought “more than half” of SpaceX’s lawyers to Twitter during this time.
One of the credible sources, The Times, also reports that Musk and other executives discussed the potential consequences of delaying severance payments for the thousands of employees who were terminated in the first week after he took over. There was consideration given to firing many employees without severance.
Still, ultimately, Musk agreed to pay US employees at least two years of salary and one month of severance to ensure compliance with federal and state labour laws. Luckily, some of the fired employees were eventually called back to Twitter due to accidental dismissals or the need for their skills on company projects.
Twitter, which no longer has a media inquiries department, is yet to respond to these issues. The social media giant has faced a number of challenges in recent months, including a major restructuring and the departure of key executives. It is yet to be seen how these legal disputes will impact the company and its operations. The legal issues facing Twitter come at a time when the company is already dealing with consequential challenges and changes.
In addition to the restructuring and executive departures mentioned above, Elon Musk’s company has also been backlashed for its handling of misinformation and other content on its platform, as #TwitterHacked has been trending for the last many days. However, the company has implemented a number of measures to address these concerns, including labelling and flagging potentially deceitful or harmful tweets.
Nevertheless, these measures have also been met with lashes, as some argue that they stifle free speech and others claim that they do not go far enough to tackle the spread of misinformation. As Twitter commences to navigate these and other challenges, it will be necessary for the company to address these legal matters in a timely and effective manner.
