Billionaire Elon Musk is being sued by four former Twitter executives who claim the multi-CEO owes them $128 million in severance pay due to the wrongful firing. The former employees say they were fired immediately after Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company in October 2022.
Among those seeking monetary compensation are former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, former CFO Ned Segal, Twitter’s former head of legal, policy and trust, Vijaya Gadde, and former Twitter general counsel Sean Edgett.
Related: Twitter is being sued for $500 million by fired employees claiming unpaid severance pay
The lawsuit was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where Twitter’s former headquarters was once located.
The document alleges that Musk fired the executives “without cause” because he didn’t want to pay their benefits and made up a “false lawsuit” to get away with it, citing that Musk wrote that the employees had committed “gross negligence” and “willful misconduct” without evidence to support the claims.
“After defendant Elon Musk finally agreed to purchase Twitter, Inc. for $44 billion, the stock market collapsed and Musk sought to withdraw from the deal, despite having no legal or contractual justification for doing so. Twitter sued Musk to enforce the settlement, and over months of intense litigation, each of Musk’s baseless excuses was eliminated,” the document states. “Under Musk’s control, Twitter has become a mockery, mocking employees, owners, vendors and others. Musk doesn’t pay his bills, believes the rules don’t apply to him, and uses his wealth and power to trample anyone.” whoever disagrees with him.”
In typical Musk style, he cheekily responded to the X allegations.
First, the billionaire posted a laughing-crying emoji in response to a user who wrote, “Parag Agrawal is suing Elon Musk claiming he actually accomplished a lot that week.”
?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 4, 2024
In a second response, Musk wrote “If the emoji fits” under a post from Agrawal and a clown emoji.
If the emoji fits… ?♂️
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2024
This isn’t Twitter’s first firing lawsuit.
In July 2023, the billionaire was hit with a $500 million class action lawsuit from former Twitter employees who claimed they had not received promised severance pay, which was reportedly “two months of their base pay plus one week’s pay for every full year.” of service” after being fired.
Related: Elon Musk gets into Twitter fight with ex-employee
“There were a lot of people who didn’t seem to have much value,” Musk said last May at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London, regarding the mass layoffs and cutbacks immediately following his takeover of the company. “I think there is the possibility of significant cuts to other companies without affecting their productivity, but rather increasing it.”