Lawsuit: Twitter failed to pay $136,000 in rent on San Francisco office tower

Twitter, owned by Elon Musk, is facing another lawsuit alleging it failed to pay its bills.

The plaintiff in the latest case is Columbia REIT-650 California, LLC, the owner of the 650 California Street office tower in San Francisco. Exhibit A in the lawsuit is a lease between Columbia REIT and CrossInstall, a mobile advertising company purchased by Twitter in May 2020. All 70 employees of CrossInstall joined twitter at the time.

The lease was entered into in September 2017 for a period of seven years and covered 15,500 square feet, i.e. the entire 30th floor of the building. The annual rent started at $1.29 million and the lease had automatic increases throughout the seven-year term.

the lawsuit for breach of contract says Columbia REIT served a notice of default on Twitter on December 16, 2022, “stating the amount of rent due in the estimated sum of $136,260.00 and advising the tenant that he was in default of the lease if he did not pay such sum within five (5) business days of service of notice of default.

The lawsuit says Twitter failed to comply with the required date and asks the court for damages of at least $136,260. The lawsuit was filed in California Superior Court for San Francisco County on December 29, 2022. We reached out to Twitter about the lawsuit today and will update this article if we get a response, but the company reportedly removed its communication service after Musk took office.

Two other lawsuits allege non-payment

Columbia REIT’s lawsuit against Twitter was filed just 16 days after software provider Imply Data sued Twitter for alleged breach of contract in the same court. The Imply Data lawsuit said Twitter failed to pay a $1,092,000 bill in a software deal that doesn’t expire until the end of 2024 and that Twitter apparently intended to force the vendor to make additional payments of $7 millions of dollars.

Additionally, a private jet provider continued Twitter in U.S. District Court in New Hampshire on December 9, alleging he refused to pay $197,725 for “private passenger air transportation services” provided to Twitter chief marketing officer Leslie Berland on December 26 and 27 October 2022. Musk completed its acquisition of Twitter on October 27. , and Berland was among many executives who left soon after.

Before the trials, a New York Times report On Nov. 22, she said Twitter began to stiffen some vendors after Musk’s takeover. The report said Twitter “executives had racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel bills that the social media service planned to pay” but Musk “refused to reimburse travel suppliers for those bills.” Musk “issued an order to slow or, in some cases, stop transfers of funds to Twitter’s vendors and contracted services” and “refused to pay for travel services incurred by former Twitter executives,” according to the report. from the NYT.

Another NYT Report On December 13, Twitter said it had stopped paying rent at several offices. To cut costs, Twitter hasn’t paid rent for its San Francisco headquarters or any of its global offices for weeks, three people familiar with the company said, according to the report.

Twitter sublet included in exhibits

CrossInstall, the original part of the lease with Columbia REIT, was dissolved long before Musk bought Twitter. Twitter renamed CrossInstall to MoPub Acquire after 2020 purchase and said it “completed the liquidation of MoPub Acquire (formerly known as CrossInstall)” in December 2021. Twitter also sold MoPub, another ad company it bought in 2013, to AppLovin in January 2022.

But with Twitter still on the hook for the lease at 650 California Street, it signed a sublease with Dentsu International Americas on October 5, 2022, weeks before Musk finalized its acquisition of Twitter. Dentsu is not a party to the breach of contract case, but the sublease is one of the exhibits submitted by Columbia REIT.

The sub-lease, which runs through January 31, 2025, describes Twitter as the sub-lessor and successor in interest to CrossInstall. It shows that Dentsu’s monthly payments to Twitter start at $91,980 per month, covering most but not all of what Twitter allegedly owes Columbia REIT.