The legal liability of Twitter is continuing to add up. This time, a lawsuit was filed for failure to pay the rent.
The problems at Twitter continue to stack up. Towards the end of last month, Twitter suffered from a major outage which followed weeks of sluggish performance. That was, of course, a follow-up to the mass layoffs, driving away advertisers, and mass banning journalists and Mastodon URL’s.
Of course, as you know, Twitter is suffering from a growing list of legal liability problems. Most famously is the potential violation of the FTC consent decree which Musk more or less admitted he had no idea was a thing. This not even mentioning the potential legal problems complying with the GDPR.
Recently, Twitter could potentially suffer from yet another legal blow. While Musk said that mass layoffs were all part of a cost cutting measure, that was apparently not the only way that the company is trying to “save” money. Another method is to just stop paying the bills. There, that will save some money, right? Obliviously, for anyone who has ever had bills to pay, that never works out, but Musk seemed to think that Twitter was different and that things will work out for Twitter if they do this. Well, that next round of incompetent decision making is predictably coming back to bite Twitter. A lawsuit was filed for breach of contract. From CNN:
A commercial landlord is suing Twitter for breach of contract after the company allegedly failed to pay rent for one of its offices in San Francisco.
The lawsuit concerns Twitter’s office space at 650 California Street, not its main headquarters on Market Street. But it comes after media reports last month said Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, had stopped paying rent on Twitter’s office space globally — including for its headquarters — and had told employees not to pay company vendors, in an apparent effort to cut costs. Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion, including a substantial amount of debt financing.
According to a copy of the complaint filed last week in California Superior Court in San Francisco, Twitter missed a rent payment of $136,260 for its 650 California Street office. That triggered a notice from the landlord on Dec. 16, giving Twitter five more business days to make the payment or risk falling into default.
The complaint by Columbia REIT – 650 California, LLC asks the court to force Twitter to pay the unpaid rent plus interest, as well as the landlord’s attorneys fees. A spokesperson for Columbia REIT, also known as Columbia Property Trust, declined to comment. Twitter, whose communications staff was slashed by Musk after he took ownership of the company, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
So, another bad business decision that has begun to reach the “found out” stages. As news of this circulated, designated Twitter alternative, Mastodon, continued to see growth, pushing the total number of accounts to above 9 million.
So, the problems are continuing to stack up for Twitter and there doesn’t seem to be any relief for the network any time soon. This has some observers wondering just how much longer the platform is going to last under such strain.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
