Attorneys for Elon Musk filed suit this week against the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, and Katz, which represented Twitter when Musk was trying to take the company private last year. Musk’s camp is claiming the firm charged too much for its work.
The lawsuit says the firm racked up a $90 million “last minute” legal bill.
Wachtell helped close Musk’s deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion and was paid that $90 million fee for its work. That number was tendered at a significant premium to Twitter’s public market valuation. Musk’s attempt to walk out of the Twitter deal was unusual, and he alleged after agreeing to the sale that the company failed to adequately disclose the number of spam and fake accounts. Twitter sued Musk for not honoring his commitment to the company’s shareholders, and then Musk relented.
X Corp., Twitter’s holding company, is seeking the repayment of “any associated excess fee payment” and attorneys’ fees associated with the cost of litigation. Musk’s company is represented by Reid Collins & Tsai, a litigation boutique based in Texas.
Attorneys at Reid Collins and Wachtell didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The lawsuit comes amid Musk wrangling over payments to other vendors that serve Twitter, including disputes over rent at its San Francisco office and payments to Google for its cloud service.
