Twitter was sued by its landlord for evading rent at its headquarters in downtown San Francisco, where the platform reportedly underwent deep cost cuts under new CEO Elon Musk.
The company owes $136,260 in unpaid rent, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday by the Columbia Property Trust.
The Twitter freeload was reported early last month by The New York Times, which wrote that Musk and his advisers were hoping to renegotiate the terms of the leases after mass layoffs.
Scaling has already begun.
Twitter has closed its Seattle offices, the Times reported on Friday, cutting concierge services and security. According to the report, employees were required to bring their own toilet paper to work.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October and has since cut costs, amid what Musk admitted was a “huge decline” in revenue.
Housekeeping and security personnel were also fired from corporate offices in New York and San Francisco, where workers went on strike for higher pay. In San Francisco, Musk has condensed the company’s footprint at 650 California Street from four floors to two, the Times reported.
On Christmas Eve, Musk ordered staff at a data center in Sacramento to shut down key servers to cut costs, the Times reported.
Meanwhile, the layoffs continued, with cuts to the company’s infrastructure and public policy divisions last week, according to the report.
Employees have been asked to delay payment to contractors or suppliers, including accountants and consultants working on key regulatory projects, The Times reported.
The company was also sued for failing to pay nearly $200,000 for private charter flights flown the week Musk took over.
Employees expect more layoffs, the report said.
Twitter did not return a request for comment regarding the retrial.
Musk pledged to step down from leadership of the company after conducting a poll on whether to step down. A successor has not yet been chosen.
The multi-billionaire’s purchase of the social media company made him the first person to lose $200 billion, according to a report.
