Sunday, 17 November 2024

Don Lemon Files Lawsuit Against Elon Musk

100 Percent Fed Up
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Don Lemon, a former CNN anchor, has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk and X, alleging fraud and breach of express contract after the abrupt cancellation of his show on the platform. 

The show was axed following a tense interview between Lemon and Musk in March.

Here’s a highlight:

The Verge reports:

The complaint — filed on August 1st in the Superior Court of California for San Francisco County — claims that after advertisers fled Twitter in the wake of Musk’s takeover, Musk and other X executives began courting Lemon with the goal of publicizing “a partnership between X and Lemon” that would associate “the X brand with Lemon’s good name, likeness, identity, and reputation” in order to “rehabilitate” the social platform in the eyes of advertisers.

Lemon entered an exclusive partnership deal with X in January 2024, after months of negotiations, according to the complaint, which claims Musk initially contacted Lemon in June 2023 asking him to join the platform. The complaint claims Lemon “expressed his reservations … due to the ongoing controversies surrounding the X platform.” In response, Musk allegedly told Lemon that he would have full control over the work he produced — even if Musk or others at X didn’t like it — and that there was “no need for a formal written agreement or to ‘fill out paperwork.’”

That December, Lemon met with X executives — CEO Linda Yaccarino and Brett Weitz, at the time X’s head of content, talent, and brand sales — for dinner. According to the complaint, Lemon once again expressed his hesitancy to enter into a partnership with the platform. Weeks after the meeting, Weitz texted Lemon, “You’re set up for a lot of $$ this year,” the complaint claims.

“Lemon said in a lawsuit that Elon Musk had agreed to pay him $1.5 million annually to produce shows exclusively on X,” X Daily News noted.

Per Variety:

Lemon’s lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages.

According to the suit, Musk and X agreed to pay Lemon $1.5 million (with $200,000 paid up-front within three business days and the remainder paid in quarterly installments) under the pact.

Per the complaint, the deal also included additional incentives including: the option to renew the one-year deal two times with the same terms, at Lemon’s sole discretion; 60% of the gross ad revenue that X received for programmatic advertising generated from Lemon’s content on X; performance threshold bonus payments (for example, $250,000 for reaching 4 million followers and up to $1 million for reaching 10 million); $500,000 in advertising credits on X; 10% of the net revenue that X received once it exceeded $350,000 for content creators that Lemon referred to X for a period of 48 months; and that all content created by Lemon originating on or distributed on X was wholly owned by Lemon.

Lemon did not have a signed agreement with X. According to the lawsuit, Lemon had a phone call on June 16, 2023, with Musk, who asked Lemon to enter into an exclusive partnership deal with X. Per the suit, “Lemon expressed reservations about entering into a partnership with X due to the ongoing controversies surrounding the X platform. In response, and to induce Lemon to enter into an exclusive partnership deal with X, Musk represented to Lemon that he would have full authority and control over the work he produced even if disliked by Defendants, and that there would be no need for a formal written agreement or to ‘fill out paperwork.’”

Read the full complaint HERE.


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