KEY POINTS
- Vendors are seeking damages equal to the amount owed by Twitter plus interest
- Several former Twitter employees have also sued the company
- Tesla boss Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022 after $44B deal
Four companies have filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Twitter, alleging that the social media giant owes them thousands of dollars in overdue bills.
The four Twitter vendors include caption services company White Coat Captioning, consulting group YES Consulting and public relations firms Cancomm and Dialogue México.
In the suit filed in California Northern District Court Tuesday, the firms allege that Elon Musk-owned Twitter breached their contracts and failed to pay bills ranging from $40,000 to $140,000 each for services rendered over the last year, CNN reported.
The complaint describes these companies as “small businesses without the resources, time and money to litigate these claims on their own.”
The latest legal action has joined the list of many suits filed against Twitter since Musk took over the social media company following a $44 billion deal in October 2022.
Over the past few months, Twitter has been slapped with a slew of lawsuits by landlords, vendors and outside contractors over non-payment of dues. At least nine suits have alleged that the social media juggernaut missed payments to the tune of $14 million. Twitter’s San Francisco landlords claimed the company owes them $6.8 million in unpaid rent on offices, as per the Wall Street Journal.
Several former Twitter employees have also sued the company, accusing it of not giving them severance payments as promised after Musk fired them.
The latest complaint was filed by Shannon Liss-Riordan, who previously filed four class action lawsuits and hundreds of arbitration demands on behalf of laid-off Twitter employees seeking additional severance.
“Elon Musk told Twitter vendors that, if they want to get paid, then sue,” Liss-Riordan told CNN. “Well, he’s now getting his wish. Businesses, like employees, should not have to sue to get paid what they are owed.”
This was in reference to Musk’s “let them sue” remark when vendors came seeking payments for unpaid bills.
“Elon would always say ‘Let them sue’, it was a constant refrain,” a laid-off senior staffer told Financial Times. “It’s all very short-term thinking.”
With the new lawsuit, vendors are seeking damages equal to the amount owed by Twitter along with interest.
According to the complaint, White Coat Captioning provided real-time captioning services to the company for its events and classes. It said it began seeking its pending invoices of around $42,000 in November 2022 for services rendered in March of that same year.
“Twitter reassured White Coat Captioning it had processed and would pay these invoices, but it never did,” the firm says in the complaint, as per CNN.
YES Consulting, on the other hand, provided leadership training to Twitter employees between August and November 2022, as indicated in the contract signed in March of that same year. The social media firm allegedly owes the firm about $49,000.
In addition, Twitter owes approximately $140,000 for eight invoices to Latin American public relations company Dialogue.
Since taking over Twitter, Musk has been making significant changes to the company in a bid to cut costs and bring new revenue streams to overcome debts. Over the past few months, he has laid off about half of the Twitter workforce and shut down its press office and communications account.
