X Corp. and its owner Elon Musk have won one of the lawsuits filed over the dismissal of thousands of employees after the billionaire acquired the social network in 2022. This was reported by Bloomberg.
The lawsuit claimed that X, formerly known as Twitter, and Musk owed at least $500 million in severance pay to about 6,000 laid-off employees.
These claims were supported by the provisions of the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which sets the rules for pension benefits.
Two of the plaintiffs claimed that the employees received severance pay of only one month's salary. But District Court Judge Trina Thompson in San Francisco ruled that the employees' claims were not covered by ERISA.
It is worth noting that not all such cases end this way. For example, in the fall of 2023, former Twitter executives sued Elon Musk's company for $1.1 million.
The judge concluded that Twitter had breached its obligations to cover the legal costs associated with the work of the company's CEO and former general counsel.