Colorado appeals court voids landlord win in lease dispute with Twitter

Months after Elon Musk purchased Twitter in 2022, a landlord in Boulder, Colorado, said the social media company stopped paying rent on a 64,557-square-foot building custom-designed to house the tech tenant for a decade.BOULDER, Colo. (CN) — The Colorado Court of Appeals on Thursday reversed an $8.2 million judgment against Twitter ordered after a lower court found the tech company rebranded as X violated the lease for a building in Boulder, Colorado it renovated but never used.“In this heavily negotiated contract between sophisticated parties, it is not for us to decide what is the better business deal. Rather, because the lease does not yield an absurd result, we must enforce the bargain the parties struck,” Court of Appeals Judge Karl Schock wrote in a 22-page opinion.In 2020, the social media company then known as Twitter signed a 10-year lease with Colorado real estate company Lot 2 SBO for a 64,557-square-foot building in Boulder. Over two years, the social media company spent $40 million turning the shell building into a flagship headquarters, complete with kitchens on each floor, showers for bike commuters and a grand central staircase.Billionaire Elon Musk purchased the social media platform in October 2022, rebranding it as X. What happened next became the subject of a five-day bench trial in March 2025, with both parties asking the court to adopt their “unambiguous” view of the lease.Lot 2 SBO argued it simply evicted the tech tenant for failing to pay rent. In a countersuit, X argued the landlord breached their agreement by failing to apply a tenant improvement credit to the rent.The lease stipulated Twitter would pay a monthly base rent of $199,866.88 after renovations were complete, with the landlord including a $90-per-square-foot tenant improvement allowance to induce the company to sign on while the building was under construction.In court, the landlord argued it was waiting on draw documents from X confirming that no contractors were owed before paying out the credit.In May 2025, Boulder County District Court Judge Nancy Salomone found Lot 2 SBO had properly evicted X, and ordered the tech company to pay $8.2 million for past due rent and expenses.X appealed.The appellate court disagreed with Salomone’s reading of the lease, finding the tenant improvement credit was supposed to apply automatically, regardless of whether the landlord had confirmation the tenant had paid off all contractors who might file a lien against the building.“Once the project has crossed that threshold and X Corp. has given written notice, the rent credit unambiguously applies to the next rent payments due under the lease — which may or may not be after Lot 2 has received the draw documentation,” Schock wrote.The panel stopped short of entering judgment in favor of X, and instead remanded the case to the trial court for reconsideration based on the opinion.Democratic Governor Jared Polis appointed Schock and Court of Appeals Judge Katharine Lum, who joined the opinion with Court of Appeals Judge Craig Welling, an appointee of former Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper.Attorney Frederick Yarger of Wheeler Trigg in Denver represented X on appeal. Yarger declined to comment.Attorney Cristopher Jackson, of Holland and Hart in Denver, represented Lot 2 SBO, and did not respond to an inquiry for comment by press time.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads