A group of former Twitter executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, are suing Elon Musk and X over millions of dollars in unpaid severance benefits. The claims date back to the chaotic circumstances surrounding Musk’s takeover of the company in October 2022.
When Musk took control of the company, his first move was to fire Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde and general counsel Sean Edgett. According to the lawsuit, Musk had “special ire” for the group because of the role they played in the months-long court battle that forced Musk to follow through with the acquisition after he attempted to back out of the deal. According to the lawsuit, Agrawal is entitled to $ 57.4 million in severance benefits, Segal is entitled to $ 44.5 million, Gadde $ 20 million and Edgett $ 6.8 million, for a total of about $ 128 million.
The lawsuit cites Musk biographer Walter Isaacson’s account of the events, which explains that Musk rushed to close the Twitter deal a day early so he could fire the executives “for cause” just before their final stock options were set to vest. According to Isaacson, Musk bragged that the legal maneuver saved him about $ 200 million.
“Musk doesn’t pay his bills, believes the rules don’t apply to him, and uses his wealth and power to run roughshod over anyone who disagrees with him,” the lawsuit states,“Because Musk decided he didn’t want to pay Plaintiffs’ severance benefits, he simply fired them without reason, then made up fake cause and appointed employees of his various companies to uphold his decision.”
X didn’t respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. Of note, it’s not the first time former Twitter employees have sued the company for failing to pay severance benefits. A separate lawsuit claimed Twitter owed former workers more than $ 500 million in unpaid severance. Agrawal, Segal and Gadde also previously sued the company over unpaid legal bills as a result of shareholder lawsuits and other investigations that resulted from Musk’s takeover,
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitters-former-ceo-and-other-execs-are-suing-elon-musk-and-x-for-128-million-in-unpaid-severance-231428042.html?src=rss
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Samsung’s mobile division has a new design chief. On Friday, the company announced the appointment of Hubert H. Lee to head up its Mobile eXperience (MX) Design Team, the unit responsible for designing some of Samsung’s most visible products, including its flagship Galaxy S series phones. Lee joins the electronics giant after a stint as the chief design officer of Mercedes-Benz China, a position that saw him lead the automaker’s design teams in China and the US. “His unique and visionary perspective will help shape the look and feel of Galaxy, building on the distinct design ethos that users know and love,” Samsung said.
It will probably be at least a year before we see Lee start to leave his mark on Samsung’s products. Prelease leaks of the company’s next Galaxy S series phones suggest they’ll look a lot like their Galaxy S22 predecessors. What’s more, with the way smartphone development timelines work, Samsung has likely already settled on a design for its 2024 flagship. Even then, don’t expect dramatic changes; from a design standpoint, phone companies have played it safe for more than a decade. Still, Lee could push for small but meaningful tweaks to Samsung's design formula — much like Evans Hankey did at Apple after Jony Ive's departure.
Two of the eBay executives who were charged for staging a cyberstalking campaign against the creators of the eCommerceBytes newsletter have been sentenced to prison. The Justice Department says that these execs, along with five other former eBay employees, worked together to intimidate David and Ina Steiner. They apparently hatched a scheme targeting the Steiners shortly after Ina published an article in their newsletter about a lawsuit eBay filed accusing Amazon of poaching its sellers. David said the people involved in their harassment made their lives "a living hell."
James Baugh, eBay's former senior director of safety and security, was sentenced to almost five years in prison and was ordered to pay a fine of $ 40,000. Meanwhile, David Harville, eBay's former Director of Global Resiliency and the last person in the case who pleaded guilty, got a two-year sentence and was ordered to pay a $ 20,000 fine.
According to the DOJ, the group sent disturbing deliveries to the couple's home, including "a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig, a funeral wreath and live insects." They also sent the couple threatening Twitter messages and posted on Craigslist to invite the public to partake in sexual encounters at the victims' home. Authorities also said that Baugh, Harville and another eBay employee monitored the couple's home in person with the intention of attaching a GPS tracker to their car.
Based on the case's court documents, David Wenig, who was eBay's CEO at the time, sent another top exec a message that said "If you are ever going to take her down … now is the time" 30 minutes after Ina's post was published. In turn, that executive sent Wenig's message to Baugh, adding that Ina was a "biased troll who needs to get BURNED DOWN." As The Washington Post notes, Wenig was not charged in the case but is facing a civil lawsuit from the Steiners, who accused him of attempting to "intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them." He denied any knowledge of the harassment campaign.
As for Baugh and Harville, both asked the Steiners for forgiveness, according to The Post. "I take 100% responsibility for this, and there is no excuse for what I have done. The bottom line is simply this: If I had done the right thing and been strong enough to make the right choice, we wouldn’t be here today, and for that I am truly sorry," Baugh said.
Earlier this week, David Harville, one of seven former eBay employees involved in a 2020 campaign to harass the creators of a newsletter critical of the e-commerce company, pleaded guilty to five federal felony charges, ending one of the most bizarre episodes in recent tech history.
In June 2020, the US Department of Justice charged six former eBay employees, including Harville, with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses. Of the group, Harville was the final employee to admit involvement in the harassment campaign that targeted Ina and David Steiner, The Associated Press reported on Thursday.
In 2019, the Massachusetts couple published an article in their EcommerceBytes newsletter about litigation involving eBay. Responding to what they considered negative coverage of the company, the group carried out a harassment campaign that involved, among other actions, sending the couple a preserved fetal pig, live spiders and a funeral wreath. They also created fake social media accounts to send threatening messages to the Steiners and share their home address online.
According to the Department of Justice’s original 2020 filing, part of Harville’s involvement in the campaign included a plot to install a GPS tracking device on the Steiner’s car. Harville, alongside James Baugh, one of the other former employees charged in the scheme, carried with them fake documents allegedly designed to show the two were investigating the Steiners for threatening eBay executives.
Last July, a federal judge sentenced Philip Cooke, the first of the seven former employees convicted in the scheme, to 18 months in prison. At the time, US District Judge Allison Burroughs called the entire case “just nuts.” That same summer, the Steiners sued several eBay employees, including former CEO Devin Wenig, for carrying out a conspiracy to “intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them.” Wenig has denied having any knowledge of the campaign.
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You are a large company with a few issues, but need congress to pass a few bills, lean in your favour, or just grease a few palms. How do you do it? Easy, you hire someone who has worked at the White House before and knows all the ins-and-outs of the trade.
That is exactly what Google has done by hiring former White House deputy national security adviser, Caroline Atkinson. She will now be working for Google to lead its public policy efforts. This means she will be handling some very large and tough legal issues Google has been having such as antitrust allegations, Europe’s right to be forgotten laws, general censorship, and more.
Atkinson is a pretty great hire on paper. Other than the White House she has also worked as a journalist and an official at the International Monetary Fund. She shouldn’t have too much trouble handling Google’s issues.
Source: New York Times
Come comment on this article: Google hires a former White House employee to help with policy issues