Musk may try to deny severance to thousands laid off by Twitter, report says
Enlarge (credit: Jeff Kravitz / Contributor | FilmMagic)
From the moment Elon Musk began layoffs at Twitter, former employees immediately started suing. In a matter of weeks, Twitter was hit with multiple class-action lawsuits, with employees alleging that Twitter violated laws by denying proper severance and discriminating against women and staff with disabilities or on family or medical leave. These class actions didn't seem to faze Musk, though, as he continued with staff cuts without delivering promised severance to many. Instead of paying ex-employees, he eventually further escalated threats to terminate remaining staff, abruptly firing employees for criticizing him and threatening to sue employees who leak internal Twitter communications.
It's clear that Musk feels confident facing down potential legal battles against former Twitter staff, but what's not clear is who he imagines will be helping him win. Yesterday The New York Times reported that Musk has begun to shake up" his legal team at Twitter as he gets ready to overcome all these claims, according to seven people familiar with what's going on at Twitter. He even reportedly dismissed one of his closest legal allies, his personal attorney, Alex Spiro, after Musk discovered that it was Spiro who made a controversial call to retain Twitter general counsel James A. Baker.
A person familiar with the matter told Ars that Spiro was never a Twitter employee and wasn't fired. Spiro only ever served a transitional advisory role at Twitter, and moving forward, he will continue to work as a trial lawyer representing Musk generally and representing Twitter on multiple pending cases. The source confirmed that NYT's reporting was generally accurate but could not confirm if Baker had anything to do with Twitter's recent decision to decline to retain Spiro's services on future litigation.