After Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and the subsequent firing of several top executives, former CEO Parag Agrawal, former CFO Ned Segal, former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, and former general counsel Sean Edgett are suing Musk and the company now known as X, claiming they’re owed more than $128 million in severance payments.
The lawsuit highlights X’s pattern of non-payment, referencing a site tracking lawsuits against Twitter for non-payment, where the person who runs the site has been banned by X. The executives, who were instrumental in closing Musk’s $44 billion acquisition, accuse Musk of attempting to “cheat” them out of $200 million before their stock options vested.
The lawsuit cites Elon Musk’s own words from Walter Isaacson’s biography, “Elon Musk,” where Musk is quoted discussing tactics to avoid paying Agrawal’s severance by firing him before he could resign. The lawsuit argues that the board authorized the firings, which were necessary to cover legal costs incurred during the acquisition.
