Twitter and Its Many Legal Battles in 6 Years

Companies owe clients in most business climes. But the cases don’t have to escalate to court. Not so with Twitter since Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, bought the social media platform.

Timelines of Twitter Legal Battles

2022

A former public relations firm for Twitter sued the social media company for not paying its bills immediately Musk bought the platform in 2022.

Joele Frank said Twitter owes $830,498, comprising six unpaid invoices, plus costs for a subpoena in Twitter’s lawsuit to force Musk to complete the buyout after he tried to back out.Twitter ended its contract with the company three weeks after the buyout closed, and ended talks about fees, too.

2022

A Californian landlord also hauled Twitter to court last year for failing to pay rents for its San Francisco office. The company owed $136,260 then, according to court filings.

2023

Alassaf’s family sued Twitter along with Facebook, and Google (which owns YouTube) in 2023 for a 2017 terrorist attack in Istanbul where one of the Alassafs  died. Under 18 U.S.C. 2333, U.S. nationals who have been injured by an act of international terrorism can sue for damages. But Twitter carried the day here, The apex court sided with the platform.

2022 to 2023

From 2022 to early 2023, Twitter didn’t pay for its London, Dublin, Sydney, and Singapore offices and their services. The client, Facilitate, claimed it installed sensors in two of those offices, fitted out the one in Singapore, and cleared out that of Sydney. Facilitate is seeking a collective payment of over A$1m ($666,000) across the three businesses.

2024

The mother of all happened in 2018. And Musk stood at the centre of it. He had sent out a misleading tweet about his auto company Tesla  having “funding secured”. The US Security Exchange Commission had taken him on on the white lie. They both reached a settlement that Musk, because of his itchy fingers, should get a lawyer to review every post before he sends it. 

But Musk has been dodgy about following the agreement, appealing to the Supreme Court to toss the agreement.

The court rejected the appeal April 30.