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Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

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Spottieottiedopaliscious
Spottieottiedopaliscious

Hotez is far from bulletproof.       

MissingInAction
MissingInAction
Spottieottiedopaliscious
Spottieottiedopaliscious

Absolutely.    Would you like other guys pointing out Hotez deficiencies?   It was actually more about Hotez but whatever? Why stick around? All the constructive back and forth

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956 Worldwide

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On 6/15/2023 at 11:04 PM, HonkeyVape said:

Yea that was bad. He gleefully steals from artists. Weird flex and boast.

In other news:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jun/13/spacex-starlink-hire-child-college-graduate?

Kairan Quazi is years away from being able to watch an R-rated movie at the theater by himself or buy a drink at the bar, but he’s about to get a college degree and start a job at SpaceX.

Other than that, the 14-year-old insists he’s had a fairly normal academic journey.

Virginia fifth-grader’s textbook correction gets hat tip from publisher

Quazi’s story has gone viral after California media outlets reported on his preparing to graduate from Santa Clara University on 17 June.

The Bay Area native will not only become the youngest graduate in the school’s 172-year history, but is also about to join a short list of people who have graduated from college in their childhoods.

Whenever I hear about these kids who go to college at 13 or whatever, which guarantees they won’t get laid in college, I wonder how smart they really are. 

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atomheartbevo

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6 minutes ago, MrBig said:

Mark Cuban telling Rogan and Elon to suck a dick while plugging his Cost Plugs Drugs.

 

It's beautiful:

Way to talk in generalities Joe. Not saying there aren't a lot of fucked up things about pharma. That's why we created  http://Costplusdrugs.com. But to ignore that the same industry has saved who knows how many lives is bullshit and you know it. It's also disrespectful to all the doctors, researchers and medical professionals that dedicate their lives to saving lives, like Dr Hotez and the 800k plus doctors in the country that believe vaccines save lives You arent trying to find the ground truth on vaccines. If you were you would bring on someone who focused on debating the issue. Like@thereal_truther

Trying to bully Dr Hotez is ridiculous. You have producers that will prepare you and you get to control the conversation. @RobertKennedyJr also has a staff ready to prepare him, and these topics are what he talks about in every speech. You both do this on a daily basis Dr Hotez works every day to try to find ways to help people.

Joe , you and @elonmusk's @twitter are the mainstream online media and your platforms have become everything supposedly wrong with MSM. You are driven by self interest. Just like the MSM always has been accused of.

And you both have earned that right. You busted your asses to be great at what you do and earned all you have accomplished. But don't lie to yourselves and all of us and tell us you are different. You aren't.

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At the end of the day, Rogan's followers aren't tuning into Rogan to change their mind, just as Musk's followers aren't following him to have their minds changed, and the list goes on, back to Rush Limbaugh (and before).

This isn't some kind of Art Bell Coast-to-Coast where you had an actual decent mix of True Believers, skeptics, and pranksters/trolls all wanting to mix it up (even if the latter groups didn't always get their phone calls put on the air). If somebody tells me they love Rogan and follow his shows, then I know quite a few things about them without their having said anything else.

And Musk is actually working to make twitter more of a platform with a single viewpoint, the one he believes. It was never about "free speech" or the 1st Amendment, neither of which Musk has shown a capacity for understanding.

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32,395

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https://puck.news/will-elon-lose-control-of-twitter/

 

Quote

Oh dear, what is going on these days with Elon Musk at Twitter? Let’s see: Twitter is being kicked out of its office in Boulder because—wait for it—Elon decided to stop paying the rent. He’s stopped paying the bills for Twitter’s use of Google Cloud and, according to my partner Eriq Gardner, for JAMS, the arbitration administrator that is adjudicating many of Musk’s legal disputes with his ex-employees. He’s also facing a lawsuit from the Wall Street P.R. firm, Joele Frank, which claims it’s owed more than $830,000 in fees for advice it provided during Musk’s campaign to buy Twitter last year.

 

Quote

As a former restructuring and bankruptcy advisor at Lazard, I can recognize the signs of a company in distress. After all, it’s a pretty obvious tell that there’s financial trouble brewing when a company stops paying its bills as they become due. That’s a recipe for financial disaster, or bankruptcy, or both. Last time I checked, if a company has more than 12 creditors—as Twitter does—then any three of them can join together to put a company into an involuntary bankruptcy proceeding. And Elon is in danger here. At some point, the creditors he is mindlessly stiffing on a regular basis are going to get sufficiently pissed to throw Twitter into bankruptcy. 

 

 

Quote

But I don’t get it, dude. Elon is the world’s richest man, with a net worth of some $233 billion, according to Bloomberg, up an astounding $100 billion so far in 2023. Why is he not paying the people he owes money to? Why is he risking an involuntary bankruptcy filing? And then, of course, there is the upcoming interest payment of around $300 million due to the group of seven or so banks that still hold Twitter’s $13 billion of debt used to pay a portion of the $44 billion Twitter purchase price. I know Elon made the interest payments owed in January and in May. But will he make the next one, due in September? I suppose not paying those (metaphorical) nickels and dimes is one thing. But if he doesn’t pay the banks the $300 million he owes them in September, he will be asking for trouble in the form of a financial restructuring, or worse, a bankruptcy filing. 

 

Spoiler

This is a real head-scratcher. Obviously Elon can afford to pay Twitter’s bills: it’s couch cushion money for him. So he must have a reason for not doing so, which of course he’s not sharing. (If I ask for a comment, I’ll just get the poop emoji in return.) Is he taking a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook? Trump, of course, was notorious for stiffing his creditors, his contractors, and his tradesmen and then mostly getting away with it. (Some five companies he owned did go through bankruptcy but none of those proceedings seemed to affect him very much.) 

Generally speaking, Trump was able to not pay creditors what he owed them, in part because they must have decided that life was too short to get into a legal fight with him. (Of course, now Trump is in legal fights with governments, which have more resources and patience than he does.) Is Elon doing something similar? He can probably get away with not paying his landlord in Boulder, or JAMS, or Joele Frank, but I assume that Google, or its parent, Alphabet, with a market value of $1.5 trillion, will be more than happy to litigate with Elon to get him to pay the Google Cloud bill.

What’s as clear today as it was on October 27, when the $44 billion changed hands and Elon took control of Twitter, is that the $31 billion of equity that Elon ($24 billion) and his friends ($7 billion) put into the leveraged buyout of Twitter is gone. It’s a zero. In fact, the Twitter buyout may be one of the very worst acquisitions in the history of Wall Street, with something like $37 billion in value flushed—the $31 billion of equity and about half of the value of the $13 billion of debt, or another $6 billion—pretty much as soon as the deal closed. 

Unfortunately for Elon, and his fellow equity holders and the banks still holding on to the $13 billion of debt (which should have been syndicated long ago), he has done nothing in the eight months since he’s owned Twitter to create value for his partners; in fact, just the opposite. He’s destroyed value for the equity and made it virtually impossible for the big Wall Street banks that still own the $13 billion of senior debt to sell it to other investors, unless they are willing to take a huge writedown—on the order of 50 percent—to move the debt off their balance sheets. At some point, the Federal Reserve, the banks’ prudential regulator, is going to force them to sell the debt, perfect their losses, or to take a serious impairment charge against the debt and perfect that loss. 

At least one of Elon’s Twitter investors, Fidelity, is slowly but surely facing up to the reality of its investment in Twitter. In late May, for the third time since the Twitter deal closed, one Fidelity fund has publicly marked down the value of its investment in Twitter. It now carries the small Twitter investment that is housed in that fund at $6.55 million, down 67 percent from the $20 million, or so, that the one fund valued Twitter at the end of October 2022. By that same logic, Fidelity’s overall $316 million equity investment in Twitter is now worth around $104 million. Of course, it’s really worth zero, but Fidelity, at least, is willing to acknowledge that two-thirds of its investment is gone. Soon enough, all the equity investors in Twitter will acknowledge a similar reality.

So what is Elon’s game here? Perhaps, as I have written before, he is essentially cosplaying as a bankrupt entity—by not paying his bills as they become due—so that he can scare the big Wall Street banks that own Twitter’s $13 billion of debt to sell it to himat a steep discount, perhaps at a price even lower than the 50 cents on the dollar it would probably trade for now, if marketed to investors. Not that Elon necessarily wantsto buy the debt, even at a big discount. But this may be the path of least resistance if he wants to prevent the company from falling into the hands of the voracious distressed debt community on Wall Street who are in the “loan-to-own” business. 

Once that bank debt starts to trade, the Twitter fireworks will really begin. If Elon buys the debt, then he can keep control of Twitter for whatever perverse reasons he has for still wanting to own this pig. If the debt gets bought by the likes of DoubleLine Capital, or Apollo, or Oaktree Capital, then all bets are off for Elon and he will lose control of Twitter. 

 

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NoName

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45 minutes ago, Spottieottiedopaliscious said:

Hotez is far from bulletproof. 
 

 

 

Stop It Michael Jordan GIF

RFK Jr couldn't be more wrong on vaccines causing autism and he believes there is no connection between HIV and AIDS. Edit: I forgot the fucking wifi and 5g stance!

>In a YouTube video that has attracted almost one million views, Mr. Kennedy Jr. accuses Mr. Gates of developing an “injectable chip” to enable the tracking of human movements

>Mr. sKennedy Jr. forcefully defended his claims about 5G. “Show me a study that says 5G is safe,” he said. “Show me one, because I can show you 10,000. That’s not hyperbole 10,000, including a $28-million study. It causes cancer. It causes DNA dysfunction. It penetrates the blood brain barrier. It’s making our children stupider and sicker.”

 

Now you are being a fucking troll. Stop it with the low effort, poorly informed posts. Or you are going to be on username like 5 in less than a month.

Edit: some quotes from that article 

>In order to deal with RFK Jr’s more troublesome points of view, I think the only solution is to agree that the current surveillance system— and the current epidemiologic evidence is limited in many ways. We need to improve the current surveillance system on vaccine safety, so that we can adjudicate whether or not even some of his claims are true. I personally believe that most will not hold up, but I think one must acknowledge that the current surveillance system is flawed, and some may hold up. 

>The news media keeps labeling RFK Jr as a conspiracy theorist and a charlatan, but that is a colossal mistake. He is somebody who on many issues is saying something deeply true. On other issues, I think he is off the mark. 

>The key to persuasive refutation is to agree what someone gets right and wrong, and also to agree on the study that may resolve open questions. That is the only way to respond to RFK Jr. Given how elites mishandled COVID19, I think the next 25 years will be incredibly disruptive to science and medicine. Sadly the same people in media who supported school closure are covering RFK Jr all wrong.

stop posting dumb shit.

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cactusflinthead

cactusflinthead 27,601

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56 minutes ago, Spottieottiedopaliscious said:

Hotez is far from bulletproof. 
 

 

 

You're standing by this guy?

Prior to the lecture, some faculty and students at GSBS recognized Prasad’s name from statements in his October 2021 blog post and YouTube videos comparing COVID-19-related public health restrictions to the totalitarian policies of Nazi Germany. The blog post forecasts a descent into totalitarianism spurred by the adoption of COVID-19-related public health restrictions. In the post, Prasad argues that in the context of the pandemic, democratic countries have become tolerant of government censorship and restrictions, which he says potentially paves the way to totalitarianism.

https://tuftsdaily.com/news/2022/03/08/controversial-oncologist-dr-vinay-prasad-disavowed-by-dean-lectures-to-gsbs/

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Parliament

Parliament 14,260

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50 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

Who? Rogan, Elon, RFK Jr? All of the above?

 

47 minutes ago, NoName said:

RFK I think 

Sorry I was obtuse.  RFK.  There is certainly debate on whether glyphosate causes autism, celiac disease and cancer.  But several of the ways he describes its use in ag are wrong.  Like 15 minutes of research would prove that.  And him being so wrong on that kind a destroys his whole argument.

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NoName

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Fuck off clown @SpottieottiedopalisciousDon't come in here and post lazy, ill informed, horseshit takes praising RFK Jr

Longer read on his horseshit podcast. Has lots of insane people on it and had for years at this point.

https://angrywhitemen.org/2023/06/18/rfk-jr-s-podcast-is-a-right-wing-circus/

 

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1 hour ago, NoName said:

>Mr. Kennedy Jr. forcefully defended his claims about 5G. “Show me a study that says 5G is safe,” he said. “Show me one, because I can show you 10,000. That’s not hyperbole 10,000, including a $28-million study. It causes cancer. It causes DNA dysfunction. It penetrates the blood brain barrier. It’s making our children stupider and sicker.”

My Qanon-in-law was talking bullshit about 5G, and when it was pointed out that she has her 5G phone with her everywhere, and that it's her sole means of accessing the internet outside of libraries or coffee shops and that if she believed what she was saying, she should hand her 5G phone over to one of us, she got really pissed off and left.  And still uses the same fucking phone and 5G network.

1 hour ago, NoName said:

>In a YouTube video that has attracted almost one million views, Mr. Kennedy Jr. accuses Mr. Gates of developing an “injectable chip” to enable the tracking of human movements

Meanwhile, Elon Musk literally has a company whose purpose is to inject chips into people's brains.

 

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NoName

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oopsie

Twitter’s Lawyers Admit They’re Overwhelmed As Nearly 2000 Laid Off Employees File Arbitration Claims

holy shit. if back of the napkin math is correct about 30% of the ~6500 laid off Twitter employees have filed for arbitration?!

here is the money quote:

Quote

 

Of course, for a while, Musk, who verbally promised three months severance (which was below what the company had previously offered, and really only one month, since the first two months were required by the WARN Act, and were actually just continuing salary, since he had to give 60 days of notice for a layoff) refused to provide employees with any severance documentation. Then, when the documentation finally came, it was way less than they expected. They also included gag orders and giving up legal rights.

Many employees chose to fight this, including suing the company. But, those old pesky arbitration clauses meant that some of the lawsuits were dismissed, with the judge telling employees they had to go to arbitration, instead.

It turns out that many of them did.

1,986 former Twitter employees have filed arbitration claims.

And Twitter’s lawyers at the big law firm of Morgan Lewis are flipping out about it. They’re asking the arbitrators if they can combine the discovery process so they don’t have to go through 1,986 separate discovery efforts.

Given the identical and/or overlapping legal claims and factual allegations in these thousands of pending matters, a coordinated, universal discovery plan is imperative to litigate these matters efficiently, effectively, and fairly. Thoughtful coordination on the front-end across all pending matters will result in speedier resolutions, while also preventing prejudice, undue burden and waste of resources and expense for the parties and JAMS. Indeed, a coordinated, universal plan is the only practical way to resolve such an enormous number of similar arbitration matters.

 

+

Quote

 

Apparently Twitter’s lawyers hasn’t met with the other law firms that have brought arbitration claims yet. But, it seems they’re freaked out by the prospect of having to handle 1,848 separate discovery efforts.

The firm also notes that they wouldn’t be surprised if Liss-Riordan seeks to depose Elon Musk for each of the nearly 2,000 claims, because why not?

Twitter will seek coordination across the matters and various law firms because for most, if not all, witnesses, the testimony would be equally applicable across all arbitrations (or a large subset of them). These disputes will have to be briefed and resolved by potentially several hundred (or more) arbitrators. An obvious example is Elon Musk. Without conceding that Mr. Musk should be subject to deposition in the first place, whatever testimony Mr. Musk has to offer will be equally applicable to all other matters, in whole or in part, and it would be wholly unreasonable to permit repeated depositions of him or other individuals across the numerous arbitrations

The law firm is even arguing that if there need to be depositions, they should be universal across all for firms that are representing claims, or otherwise even having people give four separate depositions for each firm would be too much.

Well, yeah, maybe Twitter should have thought of that before laying off everyone without providing them the proper severance? Just saying.

 

article:

 

Spoiler

Twitter’s Lawyers Admit They’re Overwhelmed As Nearly 2000 Laid Off Employees File Arbitration Claims

from the flooding-the-system dept

Fri, Jun 16th 2023 12:19pm - Mike Masnick

Back in college, I took an arbitration class, and it was one of my favorite classes. The professor (James Gross, who just retired last year after teaching for an astounding 56 years) was amazing, and I became a little obsessed with the entire idea and process of arbitration as an alternative to the costly and much more time intensive court process. However, lots of big businesses became obsessed with the concept as well, and, as we’ve covered over the years, that’s resulted in them spending much of the early 2000s turning the system to their advantage.

First, they built in arbitration clauses to agreements that effectively blocked certain types of lawsuits with “binding” arbitration, which the Supreme Court said was fine. Then they said that unalterable “click-wrap” agreements with binding arbitration clauses could take away your rights to go to court. And the people studying arbitration results quickly learned that the businesses quite frequently win any arbitration claim, in part because the company is the one hiring the arbitrator, and if they side against the company too often, guess who isn’t getting hired again later?

So, forced arbitration agreements, for a while, turned into a method for big companies to screw over customers, users, employees and more.

But… over the last few years, we’ve been highlighting how people have started to fight back against the companies who forced arbitration on them by flooding them with arbitration claims. Don’t want to deal with class action lawsuits? Fine, how about a few hundred arbitration claims, each one you have to deal with separately? Amusingly, over the last few years, the same folks who spent decades twisting the arbitration system to their own advantage have been flipping out, now that arbitration claims have become a form of distributed denial of service attack in protest to the company’s bad behavior.

Now, as you well know, in the last few months, Elon Musk has laid off a huge percentage of Twitter’s former employees. When he took over the company it had around 7,500 employees. Within a month that number was closer to 2,500. The most recent report I’ve seen is that the company is down to around 1,000 employees. So, approximately 6,500 employees are gone.

Another important point: part of the purchase agreement that Musk signed (but apparently did not read very carefully, given his hilariously inept attempt to get out of it) was that employees under Musk’s ownership would get “substantially comparable benefits” to what they had under the old company, including severance payments:

Parent shall, or shall cause the Surviving Corporation or any of their Affiliates to, provide for each Continuing Employee (i) at least the same base salary and wage rate, (ii) short- and long-term target incentive compensation opportunities that are no less favorable in the aggregate than those provided to each such Continuing Employee immediately prior to the Effective Time (provided that Parent shall not be obligated to provide such incentives in the form of equity or equity-based awards) and (iii) employee benefits (excluding equity and equity-based awards) which are substantially comparable in the aggregate (including with respect to the proportion of employee cost) to those provided to such Continuing Employee immediately prior to the Effective Time. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, during the Continuation Period, Parent shall provide, or shall cause the Surviving Corporation or any of their Affiliates to provide severance payments and benefits to each Continuing Employee whose employment is terminated during such period that are no less favorable than those applicable to the Continuing Employee immediately prior to the Effective Time under the Company Benefit Plans.

Of course, for a while, Musk, who verbally promised three months severance (which was below what the company had previously offered, and really only one month, since the first two months were required by the WARN Act, and were actually just continuing salary, since he had to give 60 days of notice for a layoff) refused to provide employees with any severance documentation. Then, when the documentation finally came, it was way less than they expected. They also included gag orders and giving up legal rights.

Many employees chose to fight this, including suing the company. But, those old pesky arbitration clauses meant that some of the lawsuits were dismissed, with the judge telling employees they had to go to arbitration, instead.

It turns out that many of them did.

1,986 former Twitter employees have filed arbitration claims.

And Twitter’s lawyers at the big law firm of Morgan Lewis are flipping out about it. They’re asking the arbitrators if they can combine the discovery process so they don’t have to go through 1,986 separate discovery efforts.

Given the identical and/or overlapping legal claims and factual allegations in these thousands of pending matters, a coordinated, universal discovery plan is imperative to litigate these matters efficiently, effectively, and fairly. Thoughtful coordination on the front-end across all pending matters will result in speedier resolutions, while also preventing prejudice, undue burden and waste of resources and expense for the parties and JAMS. Indeed, a coordinated, universal plan is the only practical way to resolve such an enormous number of similar arbitration matters.

Twitter’s lawyers note that there are four law firms handling the majority of the cases, with the largest (by far) being Lichten & Liss-Riordan (Shannon Liss-Riordan made herself known to Twitter employees basically as soon as Musk took over, so it’s not surprising that the majority of ex-employees went to her firm). Apparently 1,848 of the 1,986 arbitration cases have all come from this firm.

And while Morgan Lewis tried to get the firm to agree to a combined discovery plan, the firm has apparently rejected it (another high profile firm, run by another high profile lawyer, Lisa Bloom, apparently was willing to agree for the 49 cases that firm represented):

The Lichten & Liss-Riordan firm has rejected the concept of a universal discovery plan. Instead, they are seeking to schedule cases on a case-by-case basis with hearing dates as soon as September 2023. In one of their matters, the arbitrator has scheduled a hearing for January 10- 12, 2024. That decision and its implications for the rest of these related matters warrants JAMS’ immediate consideration of Twitter’s request.

The Bloom/Dixon firms, on the other hand, have negotiated and now executed an agreed upon UDP with Twitter.

Apparently Twitter’s lawyers hasn’t met with the other law firms that have brought arbitration claims yet. But, it seems they’re freaked out by the prospect of having to handle 1,848 separate discovery efforts.

The firm also notes that they wouldn’t be surprised if Liss-Riordan seeks to depose Elon Musk for each of the nearly 2,000 claims, because why not?

Twitter will seek coordination across the matters and various law firms because for most, if not all, witnesses, the testimony would be equally applicable across all arbitrations (or a large subset of them). These disputes will have to be briefed and resolved by potentially several hundred (or more) arbitrators. An obvious example is Elon Musk. Without conceding that Mr. Musk should be subject to deposition in the first place, whatever testimony Mr. Musk has to offer will be equally applicable to all other matters, in whole or in part, and it would be wholly unreasonable to permit repeated depositions of him or other individuals across the numerous arbitrations

The law firm is even arguing that if there need to be depositions, they should be universal across all for firms that are representing claims, or otherwise even having people give four separate depositions for each firm would be too much.

Well, yeah, maybe Twitter should have thought of that before laying off everyone without providing them the proper severance? Just saying.

Either way, Twitter’s lawyers basically beg JAMS (basically the biggest arbitration firm, which will be handling most of the claims) to let it effectively force the law firms to accept the company’s proposed universal discovery protocol:

We have arrived at an inflection point for these mass arbitrations. In the absence of an agreed-upon universal discovery protocol, adjudicating these approximately 2,000 arbitrations will be wholly impractical, there will be countless duplicative and unnecessary disputes, as well as the potential for inconsistent and even conflicting rulings, and the parties will waste enormous amounts of time, resources (including JAMS’) and effort across the arbitrations. Accordingly, Twitter respectfully asks that JAMS exercise its authority and discretion under Rule 6, and direct and assist the parties to agree on and implement a universal discovery protocol.

And, it seems like there’s a decent change that JAMS will agree. I mean, as fun as it would be to have to watch Twitter have to deal with 2,000 independent discovery requests, the company’s lawyers are not wrong to say much of it would be duplicative. The real question, though is how this can be done that recognizes that many of the 2,000 employees may actually have somewhat different claims that require somewhat different discovery demands.

Either way, it’s noteworthy that so many ex-employees are claiming a breach of contract.

 

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Captainant

Captainant 27,680

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4 minutes ago, NoName said:

oopsie

Twitter’s Lawyers Admit They’re Overwhelmed As Nearly 2000 Laid Off Employees File Arbitration Claims

holy shit. if back of the napkin math is correct about 30% of the ~6500 laid off Twitter employees have filed for arbitration?!

here is the money quote:

+

article:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Twitter’s Lawyers Admit They’re Overwhelmed As Nearly 2000 Laid Off Employees File Arbitration Claims

from the flooding-the-system dept

Fri, Jun 16th 2023 12:19pm - Mike Masnick

Back in college, I took an arbitration class, and it was one of my favorite classes. The professor (James Gross, who just retired last year after teaching for an astounding 56 years) was amazing, and I became a little obsessed with the entire idea and process of arbitration as an alternative to the costly and much more time intensive court process. However, lots of big businesses became obsessed with the concept as well, and, as we’ve covered over the years, that’s resulted in them spending much of the early 2000s turning the system to their advantage.

First, they built in arbitration clauses to agreements that effectively blocked certain types of lawsuits with “binding” arbitration, which the Supreme Court said was fine. Then they said that unalterable “click-wrap” agreements with binding arbitration clauses could take away your rights to go to court. And the people studying arbitration results quickly learned that the businesses quite frequently win any arbitration claim, in part because the company is the one hiring the arbitrator, and if they side against the company too often, guess who isn’t getting hired again later?

So, forced arbitration agreements, for a while, turned into a method for big companies to screw over customers, users, employees and more.

But… over the last few years, we’ve been highlighting how people have started to fight back against the companies who forced arbitration on them by flooding them with arbitration claims. Don’t want to deal with class action lawsuits? Fine, how about a few hundred arbitration claims, each one you have to deal with separately? Amusingly, over the last few years, the same folks who spent decades twisting the arbitration system to their own advantage have been flipping out, now that arbitration claims have become a form of distributed denial of service attack in protest to the company’s bad behavior.

Now, as you well know, in the last few months, Elon Musk has laid off a huge percentage of Twitter’s former employees. When he took over the company it had around 7,500 employees. Within a month that number was closer to 2,500. The most recent report I’ve seen is that the company is down to around 1,000 employees. So, approximately 6,500 employees are gone.

Another important point: part of the purchase agreement that Musk signed (but apparently did not read very carefully, given his hilariously inept attempt to get out of it) was that employees under Musk’s ownership would get “substantially comparable benefits” to what they had under the old company, including severance payments:

Parent shall, or shall cause the Surviving Corporation or any of their Affiliates to, provide for each Continuing Employee (i) at least the same base salary and wage rate, (ii) short- and long-term target incentive compensation opportunities that are no less favorable in the aggregate than those provided to each such Continuing Employee immediately prior to the Effective Time (provided that Parent shall not be obligated to provide such incentives in the form of equity or equity-based awards) and (iii) employee benefits (excluding equity and equity-based awards) which are substantially comparable in the aggregate (including with respect to the proportion of employee cost) to those provided to such Continuing Employee immediately prior to the Effective Time. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, during the Continuation Period, Parent shall provide, or shall cause the Surviving Corporation or any of their Affiliates to provide severance payments and benefits to each Continuing Employee whose employment is terminated during such period that are no less favorable than those applicable to the Continuing Employee immediately prior to the Effective Time under the Company Benefit Plans.

Of course, for a while, Musk, who verbally promised three months severance (which was below what the company had previously offered, and really only one month, since the first two months were required by the WARN Act, and were actually just continuing salary, since he had to give 60 days of notice for a layoff) refused to provide employees with any severance documentation. Then, when the documentation finally came, it was way less than they expected. They also included gag orders and giving up legal rights.

Many employees chose to fight this, including suing the company. But, those old pesky arbitration clauses meant that some of the lawsuits were dismissed, with the judge telling employees they had to go to arbitration, instead.

It turns out that many of them did.

1,986 former Twitter employees have filed arbitration claims.

And Twitter’s lawyers at the big law firm of Morgan Lewis are flipping out about it. They’re asking the arbitrators if they can combine the discovery process so they don’t have to go through 1,986 separate discovery efforts.

Given the identical and/or overlapping legal claims and factual allegations in these thousands of pending matters, a coordinated, universal discovery plan is imperative to litigate these matters efficiently, effectively, and fairly. Thoughtful coordination on the front-end across all pending matters will result in speedier resolutions, while also preventing prejudice, undue burden and waste of resources and expense for the parties and JAMS. Indeed, a coordinated, universal plan is the only practical way to resolve such an enormous number of similar arbitration matters.

Twitter’s lawyers note that there are four law firms handling the majority of the cases, with the largest (by far) being Lichten & Liss-Riordan (Shannon Liss-Riordan made herself known to Twitter employees basically as soon as Musk took over, so it’s not surprising that the majority of ex-employees went to her firm). Apparently 1,848 of the 1,986 arbitration cases have all come from this firm.

And while Morgan Lewis tried to get the firm to agree to a combined discovery plan, the firm has apparently rejected it (another high profile firm, run by another high profile lawyer, Lisa Bloom, apparently was willing to agree for the 49 cases that firm represented):

The Lichten & Liss-Riordan firm has rejected the concept of a universal discovery plan. Instead, they are seeking to schedule cases on a case-by-case basis with hearing dates as soon as September 2023. In one of their matters, the arbitrator has scheduled a hearing for January 10- 12, 2024. That decision and its implications for the rest of these related matters warrants JAMS’ immediate consideration of Twitter’s request.

The Bloom/Dixon firms, on the other hand, have negotiated and now executed an agreed upon UDP with Twitter.

Apparently Twitter’s lawyers hasn’t met with the other law firms that have brought arbitration claims yet. But, it seems they’re freaked out by the prospect of having to handle 1,848 separate discovery efforts.

The firm also notes that they wouldn’t be surprised if Liss-Riordan seeks to depose Elon Musk for each of the nearly 2,000 claims, because why not?

Twitter will seek coordination across the matters and various law firms because for most, if not all, witnesses, the testimony would be equally applicable across all arbitrations (or a large subset of them). These disputes will have to be briefed and resolved by potentially several hundred (or more) arbitrators. An obvious example is Elon Musk. Without conceding that Mr. Musk should be subject to deposition in the first place, whatever testimony Mr. Musk has to offer will be equally applicable to all other matters, in whole or in part, and it would be wholly unreasonable to permit repeated depositions of him or other individuals across the numerous arbitrations

The law firm is even arguing that if there need to be depositions, they should be universal across all for firms that are representing claims, or otherwise even having people give four separate depositions for each firm would be too much.

Well, yeah, maybe Twitter should have thought of that before laying off everyone without providing them the proper severance? Just saying.

Either way, Twitter’s lawyers basically beg JAMS (basically the biggest arbitration firm, which will be handling most of the claims) to let it effectively force the law firms to accept the company’s proposed universal discovery protocol:

We have arrived at an inflection point for these mass arbitrations. In the absence of an agreed-upon universal discovery protocol, adjudicating these approximately 2,000 arbitrations will be wholly impractical, there will be countless duplicative and unnecessary disputes, as well as the potential for inconsistent and even conflicting rulings, and the parties will waste enormous amounts of time, resources (including JAMS’) and effort across the arbitrations. Accordingly, Twitter respectfully asks that JAMS exercise its authority and discretion under Rule 6, and direct and assist the parties to agree on and implement a universal discovery protocol.

And, it seems like there’s a decent change that JAMS will agree. I mean, as fun as it would be to have to watch Twitter have to deal with 2,000 independent discovery requests, the company’s lawyers are not wrong to say much of it would be duplicative. The real question, though is how this can be done that recognizes that many of the 2,000 employees may actually have somewhat different claims that require somewhat different discovery demands.

Either way, it’s noteworthy that so many ex-employees are claiming a breach of contract.

 

The dildo of consequences rarely comes lubed. 

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105,154

Posted
Posted (edited)
24 minutes ago, NoName said:

oopsie

Twitter’s Lawyers Admit They’re Overwhelmed As Nearly 2000 Laid Off Employees File Arbitration Claims

holy shit. if back of the napkin math is correct about 30% of the ~6500 laid off Twitter employees have filed for arbitration?!

here is the money quote:

+

article:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Twitter’s Lawyers Admit They’re Overwhelmed As Nearly 2000 Laid Off Employees File Arbitration Claims

from the flooding-the-system dept

Fri, Jun 16th 2023 12:19pm - Mike Masnick

Back in college, I took an arbitration class, and it was one of my favorite classes. The professor (James Gross, who just retired last year after teaching for an astounding 56 years) was amazing, and I became a little obsessed with the entire idea and process of arbitration as an alternative to the costly and much more time intensive court process. However, lots of big businesses became obsessed with the concept as well, and, as we’ve covered over the years, that’s resulted in them spending much of the early 2000s turning the system to their advantage.

First, they built in arbitration clauses to agreements that effectively blocked certain types of lawsuits with “binding” arbitration, which the Supreme Court said was fine. Then they said that unalterable “click-wrap” agreements with binding arbitration clauses could take away your rights to go to court. And the people studying arbitration results quickly learned that the businesses quite frequently win any arbitration claim, in part because the company is the one hiring the arbitrator, and if they side against the company too often, guess who isn’t getting hired again later?

So, forced arbitration agreements, for a while, turned into a method for big companies to screw over customers, users, employees and more.

But… over the last few years, we’ve been highlighting how people have started to fight back against the companies who forced arbitration on them by flooding them with arbitration claims. Don’t want to deal with class action lawsuits? Fine, how about a few hundred arbitration claims, each one you have to deal with separately? Amusingly, over the last few years, the same folks who spent decades twisting the arbitration system to their own advantage have been flipping out, now that arbitration claims have become a form of distributed denial of service attack in protest to the company’s bad behavior.

Now, as you well know, in the last few months, Elon Musk has laid off a huge percentage of Twitter’s former employees. When he took over the company it had around 7,500 employees. Within a month that number was closer to 2,500. The most recent report I’ve seen is that the company is down to around 1,000 employees. So, approximately 6,500 employees are gone.

Another important point: part of the purchase agreement that Musk signed (but apparently did not read very carefully, given his hilariously inept attempt to get out of it) was that employees under Musk’s ownership would get “substantially comparable benefits” to what they had under the old company, including severance payments:

Parent shall, or shall cause the Surviving Corporation or any of their Affiliates to, provide for each Continuing Employee (i) at least the same base salary and wage rate, (ii) short- and long-term target incentive compensation opportunities that are no less favorable in the aggregate than those provided to each such Continuing Employee immediately prior to the Effective Time (provided that Parent shall not be obligated to provide such incentives in the form of equity or equity-based awards) and (iii) employee benefits (excluding equity and equity-based awards) which are substantially comparable in the aggregate (including with respect to the proportion of employee cost) to those provided to such Continuing Employee immediately prior to the Effective Time. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, during the Continuation Period, Parent shall provide, or shall cause the Surviving Corporation or any of their Affiliates to provide severance payments and benefits to each Continuing Employee whose employment is terminated during such period that are no less favorable than those applicable to the Continuing Employee immediately prior to the Effective Time under the Company Benefit Plans.

Of course, for a while, Musk, who verbally promised three months severance (which was below what the company had previously offered, and really only one month, since the first two months were required by the WARN Act, and were actually just continuing salary, since he had to give 60 days of notice for a layoff) refused to provide employees with any severance documentation. Then, when the documentation finally came, it was way less than they expected. They also included gag orders and giving up legal rights.

Many employees chose to fight this, including suing the company. But, those old pesky arbitration clauses meant that some of the lawsuits were dismissed, with the judge telling employees they had to go to arbitration, instead.

It turns out that many of them did.

1,986 former Twitter employees have filed arbitration claims.

And Twitter’s lawyers at the big law firm of Morgan Lewis are flipping out about it. They’re asking the arbitrators if they can combine the discovery process so they don’t have to go through 1,986 separate discovery efforts.

Given the identical and/or overlapping legal claims and factual allegations in these thousands of pending matters, a coordinated, universal discovery plan is imperative to litigate these matters efficiently, effectively, and fairly. Thoughtful coordination on the front-end across all pending matters will result in speedier resolutions, while also preventing prejudice, undue burden and waste of resources and expense for the parties and JAMS. Indeed, a coordinated, universal plan is the only practical way to resolve such an enormous number of similar arbitration matters.

Twitter’s lawyers note that there are four law firms handling the majority of the cases, with the largest (by far) being Lichten & Liss-Riordan (Shannon Liss-Riordan made herself known to Twitter employees basically as soon as Musk took over, so it’s not surprising that the majority of ex-employees went to her firm). Apparently 1,848 of the 1,986 arbitration cases have all come from this firm.

And while Morgan Lewis tried to get the firm to agree to a combined discovery plan, the firm has apparently rejected it (another high profile firm, run by another high profile lawyer, Lisa Bloom, apparently was willing to agree for the 49 cases that firm represented):

The Lichten & Liss-Riordan firm has rejected the concept of a universal discovery plan. Instead, they are seeking to schedule cases on a case-by-case basis with hearing dates as soon as September 2023. In one of their matters, the arbitrator has scheduled a hearing for January 10- 12, 2024. That decision and its implications for the rest of these related matters warrants JAMS’ immediate consideration of Twitter’s request.

The Bloom/Dixon firms, on the other hand, have negotiated and now executed an agreed upon UDP with Twitter.

Apparently Twitter’s lawyers hasn’t met with the other law firms that have brought arbitration claims yet. But, it seems they’re freaked out by the prospect of having to handle 1,848 separate discovery efforts.

The firm also notes that they wouldn’t be surprised if Liss-Riordan seeks to depose Elon Musk for each of the nearly 2,000 claims, because why not?

Twitter will seek coordination across the matters and various law firms because for most, if not all, witnesses, the testimony would be equally applicable across all arbitrations (or a large subset of them). These disputes will have to be briefed and resolved by potentially several hundred (or more) arbitrators. An obvious example is Elon Musk. Without conceding that Mr. Musk should be subject to deposition in the first place, whatever testimony Mr. Musk has to offer will be equally applicable to all other matters, in whole or in part, and it would be wholly unreasonable to permit repeated depositions of him or other individuals across the numerous arbitrations

The law firm is even arguing that if there need to be depositions, they should be universal across all for firms that are representing claims, or otherwise even having people give four separate depositions for each firm would be too much.

Well, yeah, maybe Twitter should have thought of that before laying off everyone without providing them the proper severance? Just saying.

Either way, Twitter’s lawyers basically beg JAMS (basically the biggest arbitration firm, which will be handling most of the claims) to let it effectively force the law firms to accept the company’s proposed universal discovery protocol:

We have arrived at an inflection point for these mass arbitrations. In the absence of an agreed-upon universal discovery protocol, adjudicating these approximately 2,000 arbitrations will be wholly impractical, there will be countless duplicative and unnecessary disputes, as well as the potential for inconsistent and even conflicting rulings, and the parties will waste enormous amounts of time, resources (including JAMS’) and effort across the arbitrations. Accordingly, Twitter respectfully asks that JAMS exercise its authority and discretion under Rule 6, and direct and assist the parties to agree on and implement a universal discovery protocol.

And, it seems like there’s a decent change that JAMS will agree. I mean, as fun as it would be to have to watch Twitter have to deal with 2,000 independent discovery requests, the company’s lawyers are not wrong to say much of it would be duplicative. The real question, though is how this can be done that recognizes that many of the 2,000 employees may actually have somewhat different claims that require somewhat different discovery demands.

Either way, it’s noteworthy that so many ex-employees are claiming a breach of contract.

 

Fuck 'em.  Companies love arbitration because it gives the company the advantage to cost each individual employee money, deterring claims, and making the process of asserting a claim a pain in the ass.  But treat enough employees like shit simultaneously, and you get hoisted on your own petard.

What Twitter is asking for is something like a Multi-District Litigation path -- consolidate a jillion similar cases in an MDL court for unified and consistent management.  Cool.  That's a remedy available IN COURT.  Which Twitter opted the fuck out of when it forced its employees to agree to arbitration.  Fuck that shit.  Twitter picked its poison.  Now it has to drink it.  All of it.  The whole.  Fucking.  Thing.  Every.  Last.  Drop.

Arbitration is a key tool to fuck over employees and consumers.  But when a company behaves shittily enough, it ends up fucking over the company.  Tough shit.

EDIT: Also....Twitter's law firm best make sure they're getting paid up-front.  And that their engagement agreement with Twitter doesn't contain an arbitration clause.

Edited by Brisketexan
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NoName

NoName 16,354

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Fuck 'em.  Companies love arbitration because it gives the company the advantage to cost each individual employee money, deterring claims, and making the process of asserting a claim a pain in the ass.  But treat enough employees like shit simultaneously, and you get hoisted on your own petard.

What Twitter is asking for is something like a Multi-District Litigation path -- consolidate a jillion similar cases in an MDL court for unified and consistent management.  Cool.  That's a remedy available IN COURT.  Which Twitter opted the fuck out of when it forced its employees to agree to arbitration.  Fuck that shit.  Twitter picked its poison.  Now it has to drink it.  All of it.  The whole.  Fucking.  Thing.  Every.  Last.  Drop.

Arbitration is a key tool to fuck over employees and consumers.  But when a company behaves shittily enough, it ends up fucking over the company.  Tough shit.

EDIT: Also....Twitter's law firm best make sure they're getting paid up-front.  And that their engagement agreement with Twitter doesn't contain an arbitration clause.

the article is interesting in pointing that out. idk how they can all be consolidated together when people are going to have different arguments to make/different situations as a part of the arb. idk how they can consolidate it all together at this point.

but yeah. live by forced arbitration, die by forced arbitration.

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Clintonaldo

Clintonaldo 2,574

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

Fuck 'em.  Companies love arbitration because it gives the company the advantage to cost each individual employee money, deterring claims, and making the process of asserting a claim a pain in the ass.  But treat enough employees like shit simultaneously, and you get hoisted on your own petard.

What Twitter is asking for is something like a Multi-District Litigation path -- consolidate a jillion similar cases in an MDL court for unified and consistent management.  Cool.  That's a remedy available IN COURT.  Which Twitter opted the fuck out of when it forced its employees to agree to arbitration.  Fuck that shit.  Twitter picked its poison.  Now it has to drink it.  All of it.  The whole.  Fucking.  Thing.  Every.  Last.  Drop.

Arbitration is a key tool to fuck over employees and consumers.  But when a company behaves shittily enough, it ends up fucking over the company.  Tough shit.

EDIT: Also....Twitter's law firm best make sure they're getting paid up-front.  And that their engagement agreement with Twitter doesn't contain an arbitration clause.

Yep, my first thought was I hope the law firm got a $25 million advancement otherwise he ain’t paying. 

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Spottieottiedopaliscious

Spottieottiedopaliscious 108

Posted
Posted
On 6/18/2023 at 8:10 PM, cactusflinthead said:

You're standing by this guy?

Prior to the lecture, some faculty and students at GSBS recognized Prasad’s name from statements in his October 2021 blog post and YouTube videos comparing COVID-19-related public health restrictions to the totalitarian policies of Nazi Germany. The blog post forecasts a descent into totalitarianism spurred by the adoption of COVID-19-related public health restrictions. In the post, Prasad argues that in the context of the pandemic, democratic countries have become tolerant of government censorship and restrictions, which he says potentially paves the way to totalitarianism.

https://tuftsdaily.com/news/2022/03/08/controversial-oncologist-dr-vinay-prasad-disavowed-by-dean-lectures-to-gsbs/

Absolutely. 
 

Would you like other guys pointing out Hotez deficiencies?

 

5 hours ago, NoName said:

dude just parachutes in, drops off a tweet about how great RFK Jr is, then parachutes out. now THAT is troll behavior.

It was actually more about Hotez but whatever? Why stick around? All the constructive back and forth? My posts are limited. 
 

On 6/18/2023 at 8:43 AM, Neonmoon said:

They want to debate him for a reason

 

 

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