Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter has brought the social media giant into legal trouble as it faces a lawsuit over alleged unpaid services for its offices in London, Dublin, Sydney, and Singapore.
Sydney-based infrastructure company Facilitate has taken legal action, seeking over A$1 million in payments for services provided to Twitter's offices since October of the previous year when Elon Musk acquired the platform, as reported by The Guardian.
Court documents reveal that Facilitate offered sensor installation services for Twitter's offices in London and Dublin, as well as an office fit-out in Singapore. Additionally, the company decommissioned Twitter's Sydney office in Australia and stored its contents temporarily. The amounts claimed by Facilitate are £203,115, SGD$546,596, and A$61,318, respectively.
The case was filed in the US district court of Northern California at the end of the previous month and was first reported by NCA Newswire. According to Facilitate, other companies have also sued Twitter since Musk assumed control of the platform.
In response to moderation decisions made by Musk, which included unbanning far-right and neo-Nazi accounts, Facilitate alleges that Twitter faced advertiser alienation and financial difficulties. Twitter's failure to contest the invoices and refusal to pay for the provided services resulted in Facilitate seeking costs and damages.
As of now, Twitter has not yet submitted a defense filing.
Facilitate further claims that Twitter's actions following Musk's takeover involved a belt-tightening campaign, leading the platform to stop paying rent on some of its offices and cease payment to several vendors despite continuing to use their services. Many contracts were canceled, and payments to owed parties were halted.
In a separate incident last month, Twitter had reportedly refused to pay its Google Cloud bills when its contract was up for renewal in June. However, Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino managed to resolve the strained relations with Google Cloud and settle the unpaid bills before the June 30 contract deadline.
(With inputs from IANS)
