Some former Twitter employees have archived a lawsuit against the company over legal arbitration costs. They expect the social media platform to cover the costs of arbitration claims. As you might expect, Twitter has no intention of doing this.
In an interview with the BBC earlier this year, Elon Musk claimed to have laid off nearly 80% of Twitter staff weeks after taking over the company. The billionaire claims that Twitter now operates more efficiently with far fewer employees. However, the fired Twitter employees first started a legal battle against their former employer over unpaid severance payments.
Their previous class action lawsuit was dismissed due to a provision in their contract. This time, they are suing the company for legal arbitration costs. The plaintiffs filed their lawsuit July 3 in the Northern District of California. Both parties should refer to JAMS, a legal firm focused on mediation and arbitration.
Ex-employees of Twitter are suing the company for arbitration costs
Under the JAMS fee schedule, a two-party arbitration costs $2,000, and Twitter has to pay the rest. As expected, Twitter isn’t losing a dime anytime soon. The social media company is asking JAMS to split the bill evenly between them and the former employee who filed their lawsuits outside of California. However, this request violates JAMS’s pre-conditional minimum standards of procedural fairness, and the agency denied it.
Twitter claims it has never adhered to that condition outside of California. In response, JAMS said it would close the file because they “will not proceed with business that we have determined falls below our minimum employment standards if the respondent does not meet those standards.”
Twitter’s former employees now face a dilemma. If they want to continue with the case, they must pay the JAMS fees, which can cost them $300 an hour to more than $15,000 a day.
Shannon Liss-Riordan, one of the employees’ attorneys, told the outlet: “The reason we had to file nearly 2,000 individual arbitration demands is because Twitter forced us to do it — by forcing arbitration. Now that he’s made his bed , he doesn’t want to lie in it anymore.”