San Francisco officials are investigating Twitter following a massive lawsuit by several former employees alleging that, under the ownership of tech billionaire Elon Musk, the company violated several federal and local laws, including breaches of contract, building code violations at its Mid-Market headquarters, and nonpayment of rent, reported the San Francisco Chronicle on Friday.
"The six former employees say Twitter didn’t pay promised severance and that Musk’s team instructed staff to disable lights and install locks that wouldn’t open during an emergency at employee bedrooms at 1355 Market St., violating building codes," reported Roland Li. "'Twitter’s new leadership deliberately, specifically, and repeatedly announced their intentions to breach contracts, violate laws, and otherwise ignore their legal obligations,' the six former employees alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Delaware federal court."
Twitter's successor firm, X Corp., as well as Musk himself, are listed as defendants.
"Plaintiff Joseph Killian, the former Twitter lead project manager of global design and construction, described Musk’s team allegedly telling him to violate building codes as part of creating rooms for tired employees to sleep in," said the report. "In addition to installing beds, Killian said he was told to disconnect motion-sensitive lights because they were bothering people trying to sleep, despite Twitter’s landlord rejecting that request. He said he hired an electrician to do so, allegedly violating both the building code and Twitter’s lease. Killian also said he was told to install space heaters, violating the lease, and install door locks that 'were not compliant with life safety and egress codes' because they wouldn’t automatically unlock in case of fire or earthquake."
On top of all of that, said the lawsuit, Musk's lawyer Alex Spiro reportedly "loudly opined that it was unreasonable for Twitter’s landlords to expect Twitter to pay rent, since San Francisco was a s— hole," and Musk himself said "he would only pay rent over his dead body."
IN OTHER NEWS: Wisconsin school district moves to fire teacher who spoke out against ‘Rainbowland’ ban
This is in line with reports from last year that Musk refused to pay rent and severance, as the company faced a sharp decline in revenue from fleeing advertisers.
Patrick Hannan, a spokesman for the San Francisco Department of Building, reportedly said, "We will be opening a new complaint and conducting an investigation into these new allegations." Twitter's communications department replied for requests for comment with a poop emoji — a standard automatic response since Musk laid off the communications team.
