California Property Trust is suing Elon Musk’s social media company for failing to pay $136,000 rent for its headquarters. According to Bloomberg, the firm notified Twitter on December 16th that it would default its lease for the Hartford Building’s 30th floor, located at 650 California Street, San Francisco. If it doesn’t pay the rent in five days, the firm will sue.
California Property Trust filed a complaint this week with the San Francisco County Superior Court claiming that Twitter did not comply with the order.
A December 13th New York Times report states that Twitter had stopped paying rent at its global offices in recent weeks to cut costs. A lawsuit has also been filed against the company for failing to pay $197,725 for Musk’s charter flights during his first week as Twitter’s head. Musk reportedly brought “more than half” of SpaceX’s lawyers to Twitter during that time.
According to The Times, Musk and other executives discussed the possible consequences of delaying severance payments for the thousands of employees who were fired in the first week. Musk was reported to have considered firing many employees without severance after he took over Twitter. He eventually agreed to pay US employees at least two years of salary and one month of severance. This ensured that the company was compliant with federal and state labor laws.
Let’s not forget that many of the fired employees were then called back to Twitter since many of them were dismissed accidentally. Better yet, in some cases, the management decided their skills and potential were required for the projects the social media giant is working on.
Twitter, which no longer has a department for media queries, is yet to respond to a request to comment.