Twitter breached contract by failing to pay millions in bonuses – US judge

Twitter breached its contract by failing to pay millions of dollars in bonuses that the social network, now called X Corp, had promised its employees. This conclusion was reached by a federal court in the United States, writes Reuters.

We are talking about the case of Mark Schoberger, who was the senior director of compensation at Twitter. But in May of this year, he left the company and in June sued it, accusing it of breach of contract.

The lawsuit claimed that before and after Elon Musk acquired Twitter last year, the company promised employees 50% of their 2022 bonus targets. However, it never paid anything.

In the end, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria denied Twitter’s motion to dismiss the case and ruled that Mark Schoberger had made a valid claim for breach of contract under California law and was covered by the bonus plan.

“Once Schobinger did what Twitter asked, Twitter’s offer to pay him a bonus in return became a binding contract under California law. And by allegedly refusing to pay Schobinger his promised bonus, Twitter violated that contract,” the judge wrote.

Twitter’s lawyers argued that the company had only made a verbal promise, which is not a contract, and that the case should be governed by Texas law. However, the judge ruled that the case was governed by California law and that Twitter’s opposing arguments did not work.

Since Elon Musk bought the company and laid off a significant number of its employees, numerous lawsuits have been filed against X by former employees and executives.

In the fall, it became known that former Twitter executives sued Elon Musk’s company for $1.1 million. A judge of the Delaware Court of Chancery concluded that Twitter had breached its obligation to cover the legal costs associated with the work of the company’s CEO Parag Agrawal and former general counsel Vijaya Gadde.