A San Francisco judge has overruled disgruntled ex-Twitter employees and sided with the company’s CEO Elon Musk.
U.S. District Judge James Donato ordered the ex-employees to drop their class action lawsuit and pursue their claims through individual arbitration.
The employees accused Twitter of not giving them adequate notice before firing them after Musk bought the company.
This is a significant win for Musk as class action lawsuits, especially public ones where the Twitter boss would be portrayed as a villain, can get expensive.
The lawyer who represents the plaintiffs, Shannon Liss-Riordan, said: “Insisting that workers file claims one by one has backfired for many companies our firm has taken on.
“These companies think they can make employees just go away and not assert their rights by using arbitration clauses, but we have made them sorry about what they wished for.”
Liss-Riordan said before the judge ruled against her clients:
“Now that the severance agreements have been sent to employees, Elon Musk has proven us correct: Twitter is in fact trying to shortchange employees and break promises.
“Musk’s decision to fleece Twitter workers isn’t just shameful – it’s also going to be very costly.
“These claims will be extraordinarily expensive and time-consuming for Twitter to defend.”
Today we will be filing our 500th Demand for Arbitration. We look forward to beating @ElonMusk’s efforts to screw these @Twitter employees. Expect more demands soon. We will beat him at his own game. https://t.co/NVvZxKqbg1
— Shannon Liss-Riordan (@SLissRiordan) January 12, 2023
We anticipated this and that’s why we have already filed 500 individual arbitration demands – and counting. This is not a win for @elonmusk. Twitter still has to answer claims in court, on top of the arbitration battles. https://t.co/c2CvJTnlsk
— Shannon Liss-Riordan (@SLissRiordan) January 14, 2023
