Twitter has been sued for failing to pay $136,250 in rent for its office space in San Francisco amid new chief Elon Musk’s struggle to cut losses. The landlord, Columbia Reit - 650 California LLC claimed that it notified Twitter on December 16 that it would be in default on its lease for the 30th floor of the Hartford Building in five days unless the rent was paid, reported news agency Bloomberg.
In its complaint filed on Thursday in state court in San Francisco, Columbia Reit said the tenant failed to comply.
Earlier the New York Times also reported about the non-payment of rent stating that the micro-blogging platform hasn’t paid rent on its headquarters or any of its other global offices in weeks.
In fact, the company was also sued earlier last month for denial of payment for two charter flights taken by former chief marketing officer Leslie Berland as Musk was preparing to close his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.
Private Jet Services Group LLC claimed it has a pending payment of $197,725 for Berland’s October 26 flight from Teterboro, New Jersey, to San Francisco and a return flight the following day, the day Musk sealed the deal. Berland was fired in early November, along with about half the workforce at the company.
According to a contract, a designated representative at the social media company was required to book charters, but the flight service company said that practice wasn’t always followed and flights were booked by emails and text messages and paid without issue prior to Musk’s takeover.
However, the company refused to pay the bills for the flights after Musk's acquisition. Marty O’Neill, head of global strategic sourcing at Twitter, claimed in an email that they weren’t ordered by the designated representative, according to a complaint filed in federal court in New Hampshire.