Musk Loses Bid To Dismiss Ex-Twitter CEO’s Severance Claim

Elon Musk faced a significant setback in court over the compensation sought by the top Twitter Inc. executives he dismissed upon taking control of the company in 2022, Malathi Nayak reported for Bloomberg News.

A judge has ruled that former chief executive officer Parag Agrawal and other high-ranking executives can proceed with claims that Musk terminated them as he was closing the deal. I Image: Parag Agrawal X

A judge has ruled that former chief executive officer Parag Agrawal and other high-ranking executives can proceed with claims that Musk terminated them as he was closing the deal, allegedly to avoid paying severance before they could submit resignation letters.

At least one former employee received unpaid severance in September through closed-door arbitration, potentially setting a precedent for other similar cases, the employee’s lawyer told Bloomberg News.

In their March complaint, the former executives referenced a passage in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk. In the book, Musk is quoted telling Isaacson that he was rushing to complete the acquisition because there was a “$200-million differential in the cookie jar between closing tonight and doing it tomorrow morning.”

Musk has been fighting legal claims for back pay by thousands of Twitter employees laid off after he acquired the social media company for $44 billion and rebranded it as X Corp.