Elon Musk’s X has moved to settle thousands of cases brought by former employees who were dismissed during his 2022 takeover of the platform. The former employees took Musk to court seeking severance payouts of $500 million they claimed were promised as the billionaire slashed X’s headcount to a small percentage of its original size.
The New York Times reports the Elon Musk’s X has reached settlements with thousands of former employees who sued the company over severance payments they claimed were owed to them following their dismissal during Musk’s acquisition of the platform in 2022. The settlements mark a significant change in stance for the billionaire, whose company had been engaged in a lengthy legal battle with the former workers.
When Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, he drastically reduced the company’s workforce from approximately 7,500 employees to fewer than 2,000. In response, a class-action lawsuit was filed in 2023, arguing that Musk owed his former workers around $500 million in severance payments, as outlined in his agreement to purchase the social media platform.
According to a legal document filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last week, X has agreed to settle the class-action lawsuit. The settlement amount, however, has not been disclosed. Additionally, the company reached a separate settlement agreement with more than 2,000 former employees who were pursuing severance payments through arbitration cases. The terms of this settlement were communicated to the former workers on Thursday, according to two people familiar with the case. While the settlement amount for the arbitration cases has not been made public, it is reported to cover nearly all of the severance payments owed to the workers involved, including interest.
Despite these settlements, Musk’s legal battle with former senior Twitter executives over $128 million in severance payments continues. Breitbart News previously reported on the executives’ lawsuit:
According to the lawsuit, Musk deliberately “manufactured cause” to terminate the executives without paying their severance, driven by a desire for “vengeance” and to save money. The lawsuit cites a passage from Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk, in which the billionaire allegedly stated his strategy of avoiding severance payments by fabricating reasons for termination, saying he would “hunt every single one of” the executives and directors “till the day they die.”
The plaintiffs claim that Musk fired them without any valid reason and then falsely accused them of “gross negligence” and “willful misconduct” in their termination letters to justify withholding severance pay. The lawsuit alleges that Musk’s actions were a “pretext to cut off Plaintiffs’ severance, exact vengeance, and save himself money.”
Read more at the New York Times here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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