By Consultants Review Team
A former employee of X, requested that a US federal judge compel Elon Musk, the owner of the social media site, to appear for a seven-hour deposition and respond to inquiries on his involvement in the company's mass layoffs. Elon Musk's "first-hand, non-redundant, knowledge of the relevant facts" is at the center of many lawsuits pertaining to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, Act, according to a letter written by a laid-off employee.
When he took over the firm in 2022, Elon Musk started a wave of layoffs. He resigned as Twitter's CEO in June 2023 but continued to serve as the company's chief technical officer. Since then, a number of lawsuits have been brought by former workers alleging Twitter of breaking both federal and state laws pertaining to the notice periods before mass terminations.
There are currently close to 2,000 distinct arbitration cases pertaining to the layoffs. According to a letter from Shannon Liss-Riordan, one of the founders of Lichten & Liss-Riordan, the legal team overseeing the case, Twitter has "repeatedly produced relevant documents from witnesses on the day before, the day of, or even after their respective depositions."
The letter also stated that Elon Musk was "personally responsible" for setting Twitter policies and strategies after he purchased the company and "was adamant about cutting costs and massively reducing the size of Twitter's workforce," citing evidence that had already been produced to support his first-hand knowledge of the facts of this and other cases.
According to the letter, the employee who brought the lawsuit claimed to have "exhausted less intrusive discovery methods." Executives were unable to respond to inquiries on Elon Musk's layoff plans prior to the purchase, the anticipated number or extent of any planned layoffs, or "who made the ultimate decision on which employees to terminate or how the final determination was made."