Elon Musk Settles $500M Lawsuit Over Withholding Former Employee Severance Package Money

One of the strangest things about appointing Elon Musk as the head of government spending efficiency is that he’s largely known for easily preventable and repeated company value loss. There’s that time Tesla stock plummeted because he smoked weed on the Joe Rogan show, there’s that time Tesla stock sank by 26% after he “gave his heart out” via sieg heil, not to mention that time Tesla stock plummeted by $100M after he fired one of the best people who also happened to be on the “Do Not Fire” list. This is just the tip of the firing fiasco iceberg; thousands of people were fired after Elon’s X takeover. A recent settlement aims to make them whole. American Bazaar Online has coverage:

Elon Musk’s social media company X has reached a settlement with former employees who sued for $500 million in severance pay. These workers sued the company over their terminations and severance packages, after around 6,000 workers — more than half the workforce — were laid off when Musk first took over the company in 2022.

Court documents filed by both sides state, “The parties have reached a settlement agreement in principle and began negotiating the terms of a long form settlement agreement,” according to the BBC. Details of the settlement have not been made public.

Employees were contractually entitled to a severance package of two months base pay and a week of pay for each full year of employment. While the details of the settlement are under wraps, I hope that the fired employees get what they expected, along with enough money to encourage Musk to listen to his “hardcore” litigation team before he reads a Grok-generated list of the dumbest things he can do and does whatever is at the top because there is a #1 in front of it.