A judge has ordered Ye to pay more than $3,000 in monetary sanctions to a home remodeler who alleges the rapper formerly known as Kanye West did not fully compensate the plaintiff for overseeing a renovation project at the entertainer’s Malibu mansion.
Plaintiff Tony Saxon maintains in his Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that Ye, 48, agreed to pay him $20,000 per week under a 2021 deal, but only turned over one $20,000 payment and $100,000 for constructions costs.
Saxon also maintains he was forced to sleep on the mansion floor while acting as a security guard and fired in November 2021 for not complying with Ye’s “dangerous requests” that could cause the plaintiff to be injured.
On Thursday, Judge Brock T. Hammond ruled that Ye should pay Saxon $3,320 in sanctions. An attorney for the plaintiff stated in his court papers that the rapper failed to abide by code requirements by delaying in serving verified responses to Saxon’s interrogatories posed to him in 2023.
Interrogatories are sets of written questions. A verified response is a formal, written answer to a legal request, such as a court document or discovery request, that is signed under oath to confirm that the information is true and accurate.
Ye’s attorneys argued that the request for sanctions should be denied because Saxon’s lawyers did not meet and confer prior to filing the sanctions motion and that they could not demonstrate that the plaintiff was prejudiced from the delay in receiving responses.
“The arguments lack merit,” the judge wrote. “Parties are not required to meet and confer prior to filing motions to compel initial responses.”
In his lawsuit, Saxon maintains he often complained to Ye about various dangers during the remodeling. Saxon alleges that workers unsafely demolished parts of the house with no safety equipment, yet Ye took no action addressing the complaints.
The day Ye fired Saxon, the singer told him, “If you don’t do what I say, you’re not going to work for me, I’m not gonna be your friend anymore and you’ll just see me on TV,” the suit filed in September 2023 states.
When Saxon replied, “I don’t watch TV,” Ye said, “Leave,” the suit states.