Elon Musk: A complaint filed on Monday claims that Elon Musk is being sued by four former Twitter executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, for a total of approximately $128 million in unpaid severance.
Legal Battle Unfolds
The case, which was submitted to a federal court in San Francisco, is the most recent in the billionaire’s string of legal battles following his acquisition of the social media business for $44 billion in October 2022 and subsequent rebranding of it as X. Ned Segal, the former chief financial officer of Twitter, Vijaya Gadde, the former chief legal officer, and Sean Edgett, the former general counsel, are the other plaintiffs.
Post-Acquisition Termination
The former executives claim they were sacked shortly after Musk took over Twitter and that he wrongly accused them of wrongdoing. They also claim that Musk forced them out of the company after they sued the billionaire for trying to back out of his acquisition deal. According to the lawsuit, Musk subsequently refused to give the executives the severance money they had been promised for years prior to his acquisition of Twitter.
The plaintiffs claim that hundreds of thousands of stock options and a year’s pay are each due to them. “This is the Musk playbook: to keep the money he owes other people, and force them to sue him,” the former executives said in the 39-page lawsuit.
Expanded Legal Front
In addition to a third lawsuit by six former top managers with identical claims, X is already facing two proposed class actions alleging it owes at least $500 million in severance pay to rank-and-file workers laid off following Musk’s takeover. X has refuted any misconduct. The business has also been sued in the past for not paying vendors, consultants, landlords, and its former PR agency. A request for comment from Reuters was not answered by X.
