We all need a little Twitter news in our lives, don't we?

[thewayne]

This is soooo lovely and not in the least surprising.

Back when Elongated bought the company and sacked people left and right, he was facing a heck of a number of lawsuits. He went to court and forced all of these people into arbitration.

And now Twitter won't go to arbitration!

It seems that to go to arbitration, the person with the complaint must pay a filing fee, then the organization - presumably with deeper pockets - has to pay a $2,000 fee and is then on the hook for 13% professional fees. With as many people as they've forced to go from individual and class-action lawsuits into arbitration, they could be looking at millions of dollars in fees.

Compared to millions of dollars in individual and class-action lawsuits and attorney fees and settlement fees.

They are proceeding with arbitration in a few states, including California, presumably those states have harsh penalties for bad-faith arbitration.

Now, here's the lovely bit: if Twitter fails to engage in arbitration in good faith, there's a real risk that the cases could go right back to court! And good luck to getting them sent back to arbitration a second time after you've demonstrated that you had no intention of resolving these cases in good faith.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/twitter-refuses-to-pay-for-arbitration-it-forced-on-891-ex-employees-suit-says/

Comments

[dewline]

I look forward to those fireworks, then!

[disneydream06]

Apparently Twitter is an IDIOT company day after day after day. :o :o :o
Hugs, Jon

[lilfluff]

If my research (two minutes of googling) is to be believed, the arbitrators can potentially demand that Elongated Twitter cover refunding any fees that the parties paid in cases where they (Elongated Twitter) demanded arbitration and then didn't participate. And while the economics of arbitration make me normally inclined to expect they won't go hard on the corporations, if they have a big backlog of cases where the corporation isn't paying their fees… But what I'm really wondering and didn't spot in an impatient hundred seconds of googling is if this could have implications in court beyond the courts merely declining to send to arbitration a second time.

[thewayne]

Not really my field.  I would think that the courts - after having been petitioned for all of these cases to be sent to arbitration, then Twitter failing to go to arbitration to resolve them - would tell them to shove it and no, these cases are all going to go through the court process.  But the legal system is dicated by the golden rule - them with the gold, hence the best attorneys, make the rules.  Who knows what will happen.

[silveradept]

I feel like they're hoping to run out the clock on the arbitration without paying for any of it. I don't know if that's actually what will happen, because I am neither arbitrator nor lawyer, but it seems like that's what the plan is. Or to see if they can duck out of arbitration if the company can prove it doesn't have enough assets left any more to pay the arbitration and/or the potential rewards.

[thewayne]

I don't think they can run out the clock - if the people have already filed and paid for arbitration - showing that they have acted in good-faith, then it is an open action.  It's not like if you're not charged for a non-injury traffic accident within X years that charges can't be brought.  At least I don't think so. I believe the situation here is that The Muskbrat had no idea how much arbitration fees could run him in the aggregate and that he made a huge miscalculation.  And if it goes back to court, he could be looking at greatly increased punitive damages for this arbitration fiasco.

[silveradept]

He's already going to potentially be on the hook for a lot, even if all the arbitration decides in his favor, but he seems like the kind of person who will pursue something with a 1% chance of pay nothing and a 99% chance of pay triple because he's certain he's going to roll the exact value he needs to pay nothing.