Ye is appealing a jury’s award of $140,000 to a handyman who alleged he was not fully compensated for work overseeing a renovation project at the Malibu mansion of the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who maintained the plaintiff did nothing more than demolition work and was paid $240,000.
Plaintiff Tony Saxon maintained 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 construction costs. Judge Brock Hammond previously upheld the jury’s March 11 verdict that awarded Saxon the $140,000.
On Monday, Ye’s lawyers filed his notice of appeal, which will be heard by a three-justice panel of the Second District Court of Appeal. On Jan. 8, Ye filed his own lawsuit against Saxon, his lead attorney and the lawyer’s firm in Santa Monica Superior Court, alleging all of them wrongfully chose to file a $1.8 million lien against the Malibu property while falsely claiming that Saxon did any work beyond demolition tasks.
Ye is asking that the lien be declared void and he also is seeking $2.27 million in damages.
“The recorded lien was a fabrication and the defendants who prepared it verified it and stood behind it knew as much,” Ye’s suit states.
Meanwhile, Saxon’s lawyers previously filed court papers with Hammond in advance of a scheduled Oct. 7 hearing asking that the plaintiff be granted $1.23 million in attorneys’ fees, citing the work of three attorneys and a paralegal.
The law involved in Saxon’s case included a “complex and interwoven mix of rights” under the Federal Employment and Housing Act and the Labor Code, according to Saxon’s attorneys’ pleadings.
In his lawsuit filed in September 2023, Saxon maintained 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.
Saxon said he often complained to Ye about various dangers during the remodeling.