Elon Musk’s recent decision to change Twitter’s corporate name to X Corp is already inspiring one important group of people to give the internet company a second look: the former executives suing his company.
Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal along with Twitter’s former general counsel and its former finance chief filed a lawsuit against Twitter on April 10 seeking more than $1 million in legal expenses that they say they incurred while working at the company. Musk fired the executives in October after he acquired Twitter for $44 billion, and according to the lawsuit, the executives have been unable to get reimbursed by the company for the expenses since then.
A few weeks before the lawsuit was filed however, Twitter ceased being Twitter, a Delaware-based corporation, and—for reasons still unclear—became X Corp, a Nevada-based corporation.
And so the trio this week amended and refiled their complaint to the Delaware Chancery court, substituting the new name for the old, and noting that while Twitter no longer exists, its “obligations continue irrespective of the merger of Twitter, Inc. with and into X Corp.”
In addition to Agrawal, the plaintiffs include former chief legal officer Vijay Gadde, and former head of finance Ned Segal.
Musk hasn’t publicly explained the reason for the corporate name change, though some observers speculate that it’s related to his plans to transform the social media service into an “everything app,” inspired by Chinese tech giant Tencent. At the heart of Musk’s strategy is his aspiration to create a “very powerful finance experience,” surpassing even PayPal, a company he helped establish (and which was originally dubbed X.com).
“Once again, Twitter has failed to honor its contractual obligations to pay its bills,” Aaron Zamost, the spokesperson for Gadde and Segal, wrote to Fortune. “By law and contract, Twitter must pay the legal fees for the directors and officers of the company for the work they have done on Twitter’s behalf, even after they are no longer employed.”
It’s yet to be seen how Musk will handle going head-to-head with the executives he fired the moment he took over, but if we know anything about his style, it’s likely he’ll be tweeting through it.
