Ex-Twitter Leaders’ Severance Spat With Musk to Get New Judge

A California federal district court judge has recused himself from hearing a lawsuit four former Twitter Inc. executives brought against Elon Musk for allegedly refusing to pay them severance.

Judge Gilliam Haywood said he is “disqualified” from the case led by Parag Agrawal, who served as the chief executive officer of the social media site that Musk renamed X when he took over as owner in 2022.

Haywood, who was appointed to the US District Court for the Northern District of California by President Barack Obama, didn’t give a specific reason in his March 8 order for his decision to step aside from the case. His most recent publicly available financial disclosure form, for 2022, didn’t signal any apparent conflicts of interest.

Haywood has heard disputes involving Twitter and Musk before. In May, he ruled against a former Twitter engineering manager in his bid to lead a class action that accused Twitter and Musk of disability bias. The severance pay case will be reassigned to a new judge.

Parag and the other top officials said Musk had a “special ire” toward them for representing the interests of Twitter in litigation to enforce Musk’s $44 billion deal to buy the company after Musk tried to back out. They said Musk tried to save himself $200 million by cheating them out of their severance benefits.

The case is Agrawal v. Musk, N.D. Cal., No. 24-cv-01304, recusal 3/8/24.