Twitter ordered to pay $8 million for breaking Boulder lease

X Corp the social media company formerly known as Twitter has been ordered to pay more than million to its former landlord in Boulder after a judge determined it broke its lease Twitter was not entitled to a credit for rent due on Dec and its nonpayment of rent for December and thereafter was a breach Judge Nancy Salomone wrote May In Twitter agreed to lease square feet of the -square-foot Railyards at S PARK office building which was then under construction at Bluff St The lease called for the company to stay years until It lasted a little more than one year Twitter stopped paying rent in late was evicted and sued its former landlord for wrongful eviction and was sued for back rent A five-day trial was held this past March The triple-net lease between Twitter and S PARK s owners The John Buck Co in Chicago provided Twitter with a tenant improvement allowance of million As Salomone noted in her verdict last week The central dispute in this litigation is whether Twitter satisfied the lease conditions precedent to accessing that tenant improvement allowance The -page lease for Bluff St required Twitter to build out the property and send documentation proving that it had before it could collect the allowance Twitter did the build-out work at a cost of million by its own estimation but in the period following Elon Musk s purchase of the company never sent evidence of that to its landlord Salomone was persuaded by a video deposition of Joseph Killian a former Twitter executive who testified that Twitter stopped paying rent in December as a renegotiating tactic a tactic to save money By comparison the judge revealed trial testimony from Nicole Hollander a top Musk aide who led Twitter s real estate division not at all credible This testimony suggests to the court that Twitter s cessation of rent payment reflected business strategy rather than a bona fide belief in its entitlement to rent credit Salomone wrote Because Twitter could not claim a rent credit in December its refusal to pay rent was a breach of its lease the judge determined With that she ordered the company which now goes by X Corp to pay million plus interest and the Buck Co s attorney fees Related Articles Twitter takeover year later X struggles with misinformation advertising and usage decline Trump returns to site formerly known as Twitter posts his mug shot shortly after Georgia surrender Twitter turning into X set to kill billions in brand value The Buck Co had requested for million Twitter thought the amount should be far less since its former landlord has not taken serious efforts to lease the space after Twitter s eviction holding out for one very large tenant rather than subdividing Salomone disagreed The Buck Co has wagered that the likelihood of waiting for a domain recovery will ultimately be more profitable than dividing the building and seeking smaller leases at lower rates the judge wrote in her verdict The court does not find that strategy unreasonable The John Buck Co was represented by a trio of attorneys Jose Ramirez Shawn Eady and Sarah Perkins from the Denver office of Holland Hart who declined to comment Twitter was represented by Jonathan Hawk and Kathryn Barragan at McDermott Will Emery plus Damien Zumbrennen with Zumbrennen Law who also declined to comment Get more business news by signing up for our Business sector Now newsletter