Twitter was sued by its San Francisco commercial landlord in december after failing to pay rent, and now another supplier has launched its own legal effort to get what its owed by Elon Musk's fast-failing hobby horse.
The latest lawsuit was filed on Jan. 6 by Bay Area-based Canary Marketing, which says it designs merchandise for major brands, including La Croix, Gatorade, Slack and KFC. Canary — whose headquarters are in San Ramon — alleges in the suit that from June 2020 until August 2022, it provided goods and services to Twitter, and that Twitter paid for those goods and services within 60 days of receipt of an invoice. Beginning in September 2022, right around the time Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion and embarked on a personal austerity campaign, Canary says its invoices stopped processing. "Twitter appears to interpret the [contract agreement] as allowing it to pay or not pay Canary invoices when Twitter decides to do so," the suit reads.
It's only $400k, peanuts to Musk, but a signifier that anyone to whom Twitter owes money is not getting paid even after lawyers get involved—least of all those who used to work for it and expect to get three months' severance before they end up cold on the creditors' list when it enters bankruptcy protection.
