Musk lawyer said Twitter shouldn't pay rent in 's-thole' SF
Once again, a lawsuit alleges that the world’s second-richest man doesn’t think the rules apply to him.
Elon Musk said Twitter would pay rent for its San Francisco headquarters only “over [his] dead body,” according to an explosive complaint leveled against him and the San Francisco-based social media company in Delaware on Tuesday by six former employees. The lawsuit details a myriad of allegations against Musk and his Twitter transition team, writing that they flouted city codes to convert portions of Twitter's San Francisco headquarters into bedrooms, broke employee severance promises, deliberately breached vendor contracts and tried to force employees into reputational damage.
It also calls out the alleged complicity of Musk’s inner circle at Twitter, including The Boring Company CEO Steve Davis and his partner Nicole Hollander, venture capitalist Pablo Mendoza, and lawyer Alex Spiro. Davis and Hollander, according to the lawsuit, directed an employee to flout permitting rules and avoid putting details about the code-breaking renovations at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters in writing.
In one alleged episode, Davis told an employee not to bother with permits or a licensed plumber for a new bathroom by Musk’s office, adding that management didn’t care about following the standards of the lease, the city, California or any other authority.
On Dec. 9, according to the lawsuit, Mendoza said Musk had decided Twitter would stop paying rent across the globe. And Spiro, who has represented Jay-Z, Alec Baldwin, Megan thee Stallion and Robert Kraft in the past, allegedly said it was unreasonable for Twitter’s landlords to expect the company to pay rent since San Francisco was a “s—thole.”
The lawsuit also contains new details in Twitter’s “hotel rooms” saga, with the perspective of plaintiff Joseph Killian, a 10-year Twitter veteran who led the company’s office constructions and designs until the transition team allegedly forced him into ethical quandaries.
When word first leaked of Twitter installing beds in its headquarters in early December, San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspection opened an investigation into the converted offices. City inspectors arrived and, according to the lawsuit, said, “This is just furniture! We expected more drastic changes.” According to the Department of Building Inspection, a Dec. 7 site visit concluded with the inspector stating that “further investigation” was required.
But Killian had been commanded not to tell the inspectors that the furniture was just the beginning of the changes, according to the lawsuit; he would be asked to personally disconnect the motion-sensing light system, set up space heaters, and add locks that, he feared, would put lives at risk in the event of an earthquake or ever-more-likely fire. On Dec. 10, Killian learned the locks had been installed despite his protests, the lawsuit said, and quit that day.
The city inspectors, from whom the more extensive changes were allegedly hidden, gave the company an easy out in late January, telling Twitter in a notice to properly label the rooms within 15 days or change them back to their original use.
It’s unclear if Twitter followed through, but the new lawsuit has already sparked fresh pressure from the city. The Department of Building Inspection “has opened a new complaint and will be conducting an investigation into these new allegations,” spokesperson Patrick Hannan told SFGATE on Friday. The San Francisco Chronicle first reported the complaint. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)
Hear of anything happening at Twitter? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.
Source: SFGATE
