Elon Musk’s X ordered to pay over $1m in legal fees for laid off Twitter execs

Elon Musk’s X has been ordered by a judge to pay $1.1m in legal fees to its laid off former executives.

Since Mr Musk’s takeover of X, the company formerly known as Twitter, the multibillionaire and X have faced a number of lawsuits. These include suits over the firm’s failure to pay its vendors and delays in paying rent for its office premises, as well as former employees suing Twitter alleging they were laid off without adequate notice.

On Tuesday, Delaware Chancery Court judge Kathaleen St J McCormick ruled in favour of the company’s ex-chief Parag Agrawal and said X must pay $1.1m in legal fees linked with probes of the platform during Mr Musk’s 2022 takeover, Bloomberg first reported.

After buying out the microblogging platform in November last year, the Tesla titan fired Mr Agrawal and Twitter’s then-lead policy officer Vijaya Gadde as well as a number of other executives.

Mr Agrawal and Ms Gadde then sued Twitter/X for failing to pay for their legal bills, including for the latter’s appearance before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

The lawsuit filing alleged the company paid only about $600,000 of what it owes, withholding $1.1m in fees for its lawyers’ work representing the former executives in an inquiry on the role played by social media on US elections.

The filing alleged Twitter/X “breached the agreements and contravened the bylaws” by not paying the former staff.

The latest ruling by the Delaware court judge observed that X “violated its duties to cover legal expenses generated by their work for the company”.

While acknowledging that $1.1m is a lot of money, the judge still ruled in favour of the former Twitter executives.

“I have reviewed the amount in question, and although it is high and probably higher than most humans would like to pay, it’s not unreasonable,” judge McCormick was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.

X did not immediately respond to The Independent’s request for comment.

The company is also being sued over its rebrand to X by an ad agency also named X, alleging the social media platform’s new name violates Florida common law because of “unfair competition and trademark and service mark infringement”.