In-House Counsel

I'd Expect To See This Fact Pattern About Elon Musk In A Property Law Hypo, But The Newspaper?

Maybe this is why the multi-billion dollar company keeps having yard sales.

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Elon Musk

Cancer or not, get in front of the camera! (by Heisenberg Media)

This Twitter lawsuit has nothing to do with his alleged 2018 brazen lying and securities fraud.

Internet stuff is weird because of its virtuality. But this law suit is real. As in real property.

As in Buddy owes about $7m in rent and is being taken to court for it.

Twitter Inc. is being sued over allegedly unpaid rent at its headquarters building in San Francisco, adding to legal battles between the social-media company and vendors since Elon Musk acquired the business last year.

The landlord, SRI Nine Market Square LLC, alleged in a lawsuit that Twitter failed to make a roughly $3.4 million rent payment for December and a similarly sized payment for January.

In the complaint filed Friday in San Francisco Superior Court, the landlord said it drew on Twitter’s letter of credit to try to cover the missed payments, but that the company still owes $3.16 million. The landlord is seeking payment for unpaid rent and other damages, according to the legal filing. The lawsuit was previously reported by the San Francisco Business Times.

While it’s not his forte, you’d really expect the second richest man on the world to be better about paying rent. Most of the discourse relating to differences between the 1% and the rest of us center on taxation. Like how billionaires have a little habit of routinely paying goose egg in income taxes as they wealth grows. Less discussed — and to me more interesting — are expectations about how much of one’s money is supposed to go toward housing. Most of us blow about 40% of our take home pay maintaining a roof over our heads. While I do not know King Twit’s annual income off the top of my head, I have a strong feeling that $7m is pennies on whatever that magical sum is.

Maybe this is just some 5D chess move that us smooth brain observers aren’t recognizing. Maybe Elon’s Twitter related rent troubles and firings aren’t a problem, but part of his master plan to get people interested in working at Twitter come 2023.

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He may just be downsizing so that he can move the company into a smaller place for the interim. Billion dollar companies like Amazon and Microsoft started in garages — maybe the reason Musk is downsizing so hard is so that it can fit in one of his car carriers until he can pull a Goodwin Procter and hire a bunch of laterals  to fill the vacancies he created less than a month before. Till then, try to make the most out of the yard sales.

Twitter earlier this month auctioned off kegerators, pizza ovens and other supplies from its headquarters in what appeared to be part of its latest cost-cutting drive. A neon sign of Twitter’s bird logo fetched around $100,000.

No need for a Twitter bird where he’s taking the company. Could be to the moon. My money is on rock bottom though.

Twitter Headquarters Landlord Sues Elon Musk’s Company, Alleging Unpaid Rent [Wall Street Journal]

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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