Illustration: The Verge
A judge has ruled that X, the platform previously known as Twitter, must pay $1.1 million in legal fees associated with the investigations of the platform that unfolded during Elon Musk’s buyout of the platform last year, according to a report from Bloomberg.
As noted by Bloomberg, Delaware Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick ruled in favor of former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, former lead policy officer Vijaya Gadde, and other executives, as Twitter “violated its duties to cover legal expenses generated by their work for the company.”
Elon Musk fired Agrawal and other high-level leaders once he took over the company and after Twitter sued Musk for attempting to back out of his agreement for the $44 billion acquisition.
In April, Agrawal and Gadde filed a lawsuit against X for allegedly failing to pay for their legal bills, including bills for Gadde’s appearance before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. X has only paid around $600,000 of the amount owed, Bloomberg reports, with the company’s lawyer saying X officials got “sticker shock” after they saw the “quite excessive” $1.1 million legal bill from Gadde’s lawyers.
While Judge McCormick agreed that $1.1 million is a lot of money, she still ruled in the former Twitter executive’s favor. “I have reviewed the amount in question, and although it is high and probably higher than most humans would like to pay, it’s not unreasonable,” Judge McCormick said, according to Bloomberg.”