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Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

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Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#71
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enforced how? Sure you have a contract but you need to enforce it. So you have to sue which takes time - a lot of time. Then you “win” but the other party can still not pay, or they could appeal - back to court and even more time. The landlord has an iron clad contract sure - but Twitter has what they want ($) and the leverage as a result.

How does twitter get out of paying short of bankruptcy?

[dead]

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#72
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter could just declare bankruptcy and restructure.

Filing bankruptcy doesn't sheild them from a judge order to empty the building, right?

It does, but only temporarily. Think of bankruptcy as fundamentally that the debt holders take over, and so a short time is given for everything to be sorted out. Creditors are paid by priority based on lien rights and some policy preferences encoded into the bankruptcy code. Nobody gets to jump ahead in line.

That is what the automatic stay does--it provides the pause to make sure nobody gets to jump ahead in line. As long as the stay remains in place, the landlord (or any other creditor) is forbidden from taking steps to evict a debtor. But it is possible to get relief from the stay if you can demonstrate that you would not be jumping ahead in line, and often relief from stay motions can be heard quickly. If the debtor needs the stay in order to reorganize (the theory being that it is better to have a bigger pie) then the debtor can apply for an extension, but only if it provides "adequate protection," which generally means paying according to the terms of the contract, or supplying additional collateral, or some such.

Timing is important. Once you file, all legal actions against you cease, and that is a very powerful tool. Unfortunately, you can only use that tool once. (Well, if you are a human individual, you get another chance years later.)

That is a very brief sketch. I haven't been a lawyer for years. You can ask a real bankruptcy lawyer for details.

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#73
post #39
post #3

Luckily they don't need an office with their great remote work policy. Oh... wait.

Their policies aren’t exactly written in stone. Yes, on November 11, it was ( https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-... ) “an email to employees from Musk on Wednesday night ordering workers to stop working from home and show up in the office Thursday morning” , but that was ages ago. Last week, we got ( https://nypost.com/2022/12/30/twitter-closing-seattle-office... ): “Twitter is closing down…

> but that was ages ago

I’m not sure if this is really well done sarcasm, but the original article is less than 2 months old.

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#74

Many companies did this during the pandemic- landlords don’t have strong rights.

"Landlord rights" is a red herring here. Companies got away with this because their financial positions changed drastically, and since it happened across the market, so did their bargaining positions. The corporate real estate market seemingly hasn't recovered and is still running on fumes, so it's not surprising similar hardball negotiations continue. It's a bad look and I'm no fan of the chief Twitter addict, but I'd file this article in the meaningless noise about celebrities bin.

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#75

Many companies did this during the pandemic- landlords don’t have strong rights.

They can repossess the building but it’s not like they will be able to re rent it. The office space glut may allow them to re negotiate the contract trump style

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#76

Many companies did this during the pandemic- landlords don’t have strong rights.

Most landlords don’t do this because they find that negotiating with a company to privately and quietly reduce rent and/or leasing space over a negotiated period of time is a much better alternative for all parties.

Musk could have also got the same, but he decided to go fill scorched earth so it will have to go through the legal system instead.

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#77
post #68

> Twitter hasn’t paid rent on its headquarters, or any of its other global offices, in weeks, the New York Times reported on Dec. 13. Isn’t rent paid once per month? When I was a renter, this could’ve been said about me literally every month, once two weeks had elapsed between payments.

According to the landlord Twitter is supposed to have been “in default” on their lease as of Dec 21. It’s like the second sentence of the Bloomberg article we’re commenting on, before the subscription fold.

I would be interested in knowing how many other tenants this landlord has chosen to file suit on when the tenant is 7 days over due (in default in 21st, filed the suit on the 29th)? Seem very aggressive.

I wonder if politics has any bearing on their choice to file? Or the fact that Elon has publicly been considering closing the SanFran HQ?

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#78

Many companies did this during the pandemic- landlords don’t have strong rights.

Corporations are not people. Corporations can enter into contracts that humans would be protected from. This is a straight-up contract dispute between corporations. Twitter could get locked out of some of their offices and possibly even data centers, and the contents of those buildings could get sold off to pay down back rent.

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#79
post #69

Some claim Twitter is attempting to renegotiate. That may well be true. But this doesn't fit in well with the greater narrative. Since Elon's takeover of Twitter, it's been one PR disaster after the next. Mass layoffs, begging people to come back, cutting remote work, cutting in-office catering, the whole Twitter Blue debacle, unbanning some of the worst, the drop of advertising spend on Twitter (which, at least in p…

They had to cut costs to keep away from the "fast lane to bankruptcy". When not pulling in enough revenue, you have to act quickly.

https://youtu.be/HE5CTKqWEV0?t=3570

Wasn't twitter supposed to stop working by now? They are still functioning, despite the layoffs. Maybe it worked?

Re: Twitter Sued for Nonpayment of Rent on San Francisco Office

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landlords have very strong rights. They can get tenants evicted through legal means.

They don't need to evict: they can lock the doors and turn power off to all computers.

Commercial landlording is different than residential, but in residential, just changing the locks sets you up for a lot of trouble.

Power would only really be an issue if anything important was running in their offices, but running servers in the office has been unfashionable for quite some time, so I wouldn't expect much if anything to break there.

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