Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) is being sued over US$136,000 by a landlord after allegedly not paying rent on one of its San Francisco offices.
The social media platform owned by Elon Musk was notified of its failure to pay rent for its California Street office in a late December court filing by landlord Columbia REIT.
The investment trust initially warned Twitter would be defaulting if it did not pay within five days from 16 December, with the “complaint for breach of contract” following on the 29.
The lawsuit comes after Musk compared Twitter to “a plane that is headed towards the ground at high speed with the engines on fire,” last month.
Since his US$44bn takeover in October last year, Musk has become locked in a very public effort to turn Twitter into a profit-making business.
Musk had previously stated that Twitter faced daily losses of US$4mln, shortly after firing around half of the company’s workforce in November.
He then confirmed his planned departure as the company’s chief executive after polling users on 18 December, saying: “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!”
While it is unclear who may replace him and when this will happen, Musk has still faced scrutiny from investors who have watched his net worth fall alongside that of Tesla's.
“Tesla’s market value has plunged since the Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and his performance demonstrates how the Tesla Board has failed to hold Musk accountable,” said Antoine Argouges, chief executive of activist shareholder Tulipshare.
“Don’t be the clown on the clown car!”
Too late haha
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 27, 2022