Some former Twitter employees have filed 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 to do so.
In an interview with BBC earlier this year, Elon Musk claimed he had laid off nearly 80% of Twitter staff weeks after taking over the company. The billionaire claims Twitter is now working more efficiently with much fewer employees. However, the laid-off Twitter staff first started a legal battle against their former employer over unpaid severance payments.
Their previous class-action lawsuit was rejected due to a provision in their contract. This time, they are suing the company over legal arbitration costs. The plaintiffs filed their lawsuit on July 3rd in the Northern District of California. Both parties must refer to JAMS, a legal company focused on mediation and arbitration.
Twitter former employees sue the company for arbitration costs
According to JAMS’s fee schedule, a two-party arbitration costs $2,000, and Twitter must pay the rest. As expected, Twitter won’t lose a penny easily. The social media company is asking JAMS to split the bill evenly between them and the former employee who filed their lawsuits outside California. This request, however, violates JAMS’s pre-conditional minimum standards of procedural fairness, and the agency declined it.
Twitter claims it never abided by that condition outside of California. In response, JAMS said it would close the file as they “will not proceed with cases that we have determined fall under our Employment Minimum Standards if Respondent will not abide by those standards.”
Twitter’s former employees are now in a dilemma. If they want to continue with the case, they should cover the JAMS fees, which could cost them $300 per hour to more than $15,000 per day.
Shannon Liss-Riordan, one of the employees’ lawyers, told the outlet, “The reason we had to file nearly 2,000 individual arbitration demands is because Twitter forced us to — by moving to compel arbitration. Now that it has made its bed, it doesn’t want to lie in it.”