August 31, 2023

Elon Musk is facing $3.5 million in arbitration fees after Twitter laid off thousands of employees shortly after he acquired the company.

The layoffs resulted in a number of former employees filing arbitration cases against Twitter, seeking to get their promised severance pay. The cases are being handled by JAMS, an arbitration service that charges $2,000 per two-party case. Former employees are only on the hook for $400 of that fee, but Twitter has refused to pay the remaining $1,600.

This has led to multiple lawsuits from former employees, who are arguing that Twitter is violating their contracts by refusing to pay the filing fees. Twitter has argued that it did not require former employees to move their cases to arbitration, but a judge has ruled that the company is still obligated to pay the fees.

Twitter has also been sued by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a disinformation research organization, and by the law firm that represented the prior Twitter administration. It also dealt with unpaid bills from landlords and software vendors in the past 10 months.

The sources for this piece include an article in Mashable.