Attorneys who represented 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 are asking a judge to dismiss the part of a suit the singer filed against the law firm.
Jack-of-all-trades Tony Saxon maintained in his underlying Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that Ye, 49, 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 T. Hammond previously upheld the jury’s March 11 verdict that awarded Saxon $140,000.
Ye and his company, Shore Drive Holdings LLC, filed their own lawsuit against Saxon and West Coast Trial Lawyers APLC, the law firm that represented the handyman. The amended suit filed July 10 alleges that the January 2024 recording of a $1.8 million lien against Ye’s residence was a “fabrication and the defendants who prepared it, verified it and stood behind it knew as much.”
Ye’s suit calls the lien a “pressure device recorded to cloud the property’s title and to coerce payment of the unrelated employment claims (Saxon and West Coast) were pursuing in the underlying action.”
Ye is asking that the lien be declared void and he also is seeking $2.27 million in damages.
On Wednesday, attorneys for Saxon and West Coast filed court papers with Hammond asking that the portion of the complaint pertaining to the law firm be dismissed. The West Coast lawyers state that the Ye pleadings are “uncertain, ambiguous and unintelligible” and improperly combine multiple parties and theories without apportioning conduct, making it impossible to discern which allegations are directed at which defendants.
The West Coast attorneys also contend that all of Ye’s claims are barred by the litigation privilege because they arise from “protected petitioning activity.”
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.