Musk sues law firm for overcharging Twitter when Twitter was suing Musk Elon Musk is suing the lawyers who were representing Twitter when it sued him for trying to abandon his $44 billion takeover offer in 2022. Now the bill is due for suing himself, Musk, as owner of the social media platform, says it is too damn high. Make sense? The erstwhile CEO of Twitter, which now goes by "X Corp," filed …
Probably not. I'm sure he'll be paying afterwards...
Musk seems to be forgetting that, had he any concern over the costs his prevarication might run up for the company, he was in the perfect position to do something about it. All he had to do was close the deal then he'd have had a say in the matter...
"And how is he paying the lawyers who are suing the lawyers for him? Upfront?"
Obviously never had the pleasure of dealing with those fucking parasites. They have a thing they require called a retainer, it is a large sum of cash you pay before they will even take the case. As the case progresses if needed additional payments are made to the retainer fund.
Yes, a bit like Trump he thrives on publicity. This is a meritless case that ought to get thrown out. In some jurisdictions this can also carry a fine for wasting the court's time but I think US tort law is too screwed. If nothing else, it might make his future lawyer's fees even higher.
The crazier he gets, the more people talk about him, and the more his musketeers fall in love with him.
Only now you need to be a Twitter user to see posts and Twitter is haemorrhaging users, it all means nothing anyway. The worst possible outcome for a raging narcissist like Musk.
@gecho
Unfortunately,I have to agree with you they did a smashing job. Too fucking smashing if you ask me.
I understood Twitter had lost most of it's value. I just looked for a laugh. I am shocked, so shocked in fact, that I need voddy.
https://companiesmarketcap.com/twitter/marketcap/
WLRK are high up on the list of the most expensive lawyers in the US. I have confidence they can provide legal evidence that they deserve every cent. The Version 1 Twitter board negotiated them down to a 0.2% commission. I think they got an outstanding deal for Elon and that OMFG expresses surprise at how small the bill was.
The fun bit is that Musk is suing the lawyers - presumably because they have $90M - rather than the previous board who may well not have $90M. What the board do have is an indemnification agreement: if they get sued for their actions on behalf of Twitter, Twitter have to pay their legal costs. That bill would now go to X Corp.
When grown-ups negotiate a hostile takeover they make sure the contract includes consequences for the old leadership if they set fire to the office on the way out. Perhaps someone was in such a rush to buy a shiny new toy that he cut a few corners in the process.
And when he loses this case, because Twitter's fiduciary duty to its then shareholders to ensure the deal was closed totally justified them paying top legal dollar to ensure that they got Musk's inflated share offer, he can perhaps sue the lawyers who agreed to represent him to sue the previous lawyers.
And it's not even today's dumbest Musk story, I presume the dick-measuring contest was deemed too pathetic to report.
Certainly the former shareholders probably see it as the best $90million of Musk's money they ever spent.
He could have said no, all he had to do was close the deal and then he could have stopped the law firm being hired in the first place.
"he can perhaps sue the lawyers who agreed to represent him to sue the previous lawyers."
And then sue the lawyers who take on that case.
One thing about the US legal system - there are so many lawyers it'll take him a long time to get round the whole lot so that he has them all suing each other for him and has to start another round.
In theory, the billionaire members would measure up such that Reg units of Linguine would be a convenient unit to express the length
https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html#length
Even when the result looks clear in advance, litigation can end with a surprise. When Musk threw his "but the 'bots" tantrum the very predictable result was that he would have to abide by the contract he signed. That would mean $44B divided between the shareholders and Musk would get among other things Twitter's bank accounts - less the legal fees. In that situation a good strategy for getting a purchaser to pay up would be to hire lawyers from the list of firms world famous for their exorbitant prices. WLRK were doing precisely as instructed by their client: giving Musk every possible reason to capitulate in full without delay, so I do not fault them for their prices in this case. Perhaps there is a reason to take issue with the sort of client WLRK accept (I havn't looked). This time they were simply getting Musk to honour a commitment he had made with enthusiasm and without listening to anyone trying to advise him of the consequences.
Mark Zuckerberg is not exactly flavour of the month in any other context but Elon has worked really hard to become even less popular. I am not referring to hard work put in by others with a financial incentive for Musk to fail. Musk has made a clear effort to express his character in his tweets and by his own actions - or lack thereof when it comes to paying bills and former employees.
>” in this case he's probably right - strangely enough lawyers do have an excessive charging policy.”
Let’s assume he is right and Twitter was “overcharged”, where is the evidence?
Are any of the executives who contracted for the legal services and authorised the payment of invoices, shouting about overcharging?
Musk really needs to be suing the ex Twitter executives responsible for signing off the invoices.
Suspect this act is linked to Musk’s own legal bills for the takeover of Twitter which he incurred and are now due for payment… Hence this is a game play attempt to get his lawyers to discount their bills.
I wonder when the HP-Autonomy style proceedings will start, with Musk claiming Twitter executives overvalued the company and misrepresented its worth to him…
There are literal plot lines from sitcoms circa the early 2000s that are now our daily reality. I'm becoming more and more convinced we're just NPCs in some giant version of The Sims, and we're the poor sods who exist in the test environment where they try out all kinds of crazy ideas.
If I were any of the people owed money by Twitter, I'd be instructing my lawyers to add this to an amended complaint saying that Twitter apparently has money to pay for lawyers to sue other lawyers, so it clearly has money it could have used to pay down the debt they owe on things like rent and hosting provider bills.
If I have a company expense card, and go out and spend 2000 quid on a slap up meal with wine at a fancy restaurant the day before I leave the company, and the company objects and considers this an abuse of what the card was intended for, they can't sue the restaurant for the money back. That's not how it works. They may have a case against me, depending on what guidance I had been given about the use of the card.
Even if we suppose that the bill was unjustified, twitter accepted it and paid it. So Musk should be going after the former management for abuse of company finances, not the law firm. I would imagine they have a fair amount of cash to hand, given the fact they gave Musk a bath he won't forget in forcing him to buy for 44 billion.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-07-11/matt-levine-s-money-stuff-elon-musk-blames-the-lawyers
https://web.archive.org/web/20230711174717/https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-07-11/matt-levine-s-money-stuff-elon-musk-blames-the-lawyers
The size of the deal and the ensuing lawsuit from Elon trying to back out wasn't the sort of thing where Twitter would be well justified in trying to shop attorneys to get the best price. The goal was to get the law office with the most experience in dealing with the in/outs of massive Merger and Acquisitions deals regardless of a few bucks plus or minus. After reading the article and the posts, I expect that the former management expected they'd win if they brought out the biggest guns they could get which would also mean they wouldn't be the ones needing to cover the cost. The shareholders had already taken a hit from Elon's antics so it was important that the signed contract was enforced and the shareholders would not be losing money on their stock due to Elon playing games.
I"m sure the law office can wait a bit to get paid on this one. It will be well worth it. In the mean time, yet another law firm is going to make a mint pursing the case for Elon understanding they have to also charge a premium since it will be one in the "L" column and no attorney wants to enter the game with that outcome nearly guaranteed. Successful firms understand that their reputation is a big part of how much of an hourly fee they can charge. You are only as good as the last time you screwed up.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
