A group of former Twitter Inc. executives filed a lawsuit in a federal court today against Elon Musk and what is now called X Corp., arguing that the company owes them a total of $128 million in unpaid severance.

When Musk (pictured) finally took over the social media giant in 2022, he soon got busy relieving it of some of its major executives. The acquisition itself had been one of the messiest in the history of tech industry buyouts. Once Musk was at the helm, he said goodbye to some of the company’s highest-paid employees.

Now they are fighting back with a lawsuit, saying that Musk took revenge on them for the difficult acquisition and then tried to recover some of his losses by “repeatedly refusing to honor other clear contractual commitments.” The group includes former Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, former Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, former head of legal Vijaya Gadde and former General Counsel Sean Edgett.

Musk’s shakeup led to a mass culling of its 7500-person workforce, although it seems even prior to Musk taking over that X – then Twitter – was planning a fairly substantial trim. Agrawal had said before the takeover that it was “time for a change” and Twitter was going to go in a “different direction,” although he likely didn’t see himself being part of the jetsam when Twitter’s ship headed in its new direction.

The lawsuit contends that Musk had a “special ire” for the executives he let go, claiming that Musk had planned to fire them “for cause” so he didn’t have to pay them the proper severance. They say that Musk had bragged that he’d save $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.”

The lawsuit states that Agrawal is entitled to $57.4 million in severance benefits, while Segal should get $44.5 million, Gadde $20 million and Edgett $6.8 million, all adding up to $128 million.

Neither X nor Musk has yet publicly commented on the matter.

Photo: UK Government/Flickr