Technology

King Twit's Firing Habit Could Cost The Company A Cool $500M

If only he had a team of lawyers that could give him advice. That he didn't already fire.

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twitter-gfdd804df4_1920Walking evidence that rich people aren’t inherently smart, Elon Musk has volunteered to teach all of us the importance of reading the fine print. And what better teacher is there than someone else’s foibles? Because Musk damned sure isn’t learning from them himself. You’d think he’d have taken to heart the economic consequences of breaking employment contracts after his infamous cocktail of breach and disability mocking that helped Telsa stock fall billions of dollars. You’d also be wrong. He severed so many Twitter employee’s contracts that Twitter could be on the hook to tune of, I don’t know, $500M? From Reuters:

Twitter Inc on Wednesday was hit with a lawsuit accusing it of refusing to pay at least $500 million in promised severance to thousands of employees who were laid off after Elon Musk acquired the company.

Courtney McMillian, who oversaw Twitter’s employee benefits programs…claims that under a severance plan created by Twitter in 2019, most workers were promised two months of their base pay plus one week of pay for each full year of service if they were laid off. Senior employees such as McMillian were owed six months of base pay, according to the lawsuit.

But Twitter only gave laid-off workers at most one month of severance pay, and many of them did not receive anything, McMillian claims.

The best part of this lawsuit will be the ensuing hijinks. For example:

Can I guarantee that discovery will lead to someone finding an email from HR to Elon that he needs to pay these people their agreed upon severance where his only response is a poop emoji? No, but it’s probably out there. It is really hard to believe that Elon didn’t know that he was breaching employee contracts after the 4th manager he fired from the specific “Do Not Fire” list. Between attritioning lawsuits and Musk’s capable hands, there’s no clue how much longer the bird app will be up and running. At least we have Threads. Wait, he’s enmeshed in a lawsuit over that too.

Twitter Owes Ex-Employees $500 Million In Severance, Lawsuit Claims [Reuters]

Earlier: Attention Desperate Billionaire Tweets Evidence For A Likely Future Wrongful Termination Lawsuit To Own The Libs
If The Wrongful Termination Lawsuit Doesn’t Get Elon Musk, The Dip In Stock Will

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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