Photo Credit: Sasun Bughdaryan
Ye’s disastrous Malibu real estate project into which he poured millions is costing him $321,000 more following a Los Angeles Superior Court decision.
Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, now owes the construction worker who was injured while working on his Malibu property more in legal fees than the jury initially awarded him in its March verdict.
Tony Saxon, the construction manager of Ye’s wildly ambitious project to transform his Malibu house, was awarded $140,000 for the rapper’s failure to provide workers’ compensation for a back injury he sustained in 2021. Now, Ye also owes him $181,000 to cover his legal fees and costs, according to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brock Hammond.
Saxon’s initial filing alleged that he was not fully compensated for his work overseeing the renovation project at the Malibu property, and he was seeking $1.23 million. In their opposition to Saxon’s request, Ye’s legal team pointed out that the plaintiff was asking for nearly nine times what the jury awarded him on a claim that they assert should have been “denied in its entirety as unreasonably inflated.”
Nonetheless, Saxon’s attorneys contended that $1.23 million was fair and consisted of compensation for the work of three West Coast trial lawyers and over $8,000 in remuneration to a paralegal. Saxon’s lawsuit asserted that Ye had agreed to pay him $20,000 per week under a deal reached in 2021 but only paid him $20,000 on one occasion, as well as $100,000 for construction costs.
He also claimed he was forced to sleep on the mansion floor while acting as a security guard and was fired for refusing Ye’s “dangerous requests” to demolish parts of the house with no safety equipment. Some of the rapper’s more unusual requests for the renovation reportedly included removing all the windows and electricity from the home.
Meanwhile, Ye’s countersuit against Saxon remains ongoing, which accuses Saxon of improperly interfering with the sale of the Malibu property. According to the filing, Ye ultimately sold the mansion at a $36 million loss after he paid $57 million to purchase the property.
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