Kanye West Sued By Ex-Employee Over Back Pay and Unsafe Working Conditions https://t.co/eyVvnznNXf
— billboard (@billboard) September 13, 2023
– A singer who moonlights in security and construction has sued the rapper over back payments and dangerous conditions stemming from a late-2021 attempt to turn the hip-hop star’s Malibu home into an “open-concept, industrial-brutalist, art-style dwelling that’s also a bomb shelter-bunker,”
– In a Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit filed Wednesday (Sept. 13), Tony Saxon alleges he injured his back while working on the project and had to spend days at the property with no food or bedding
– Claims the rapper promised him $20,000 a week, but after a month on the job, he received just $20,000 total, plus $120,000 for reimbursement of construction costs.
– Ye mentioned his desire to install generators inside the building, which Saxon suggested would be unsafe, and the rapper became angry. “He told me I was a Clinton, a Kardashian, an enemy, and I was not going to be his friend anymore,” Saxon says. “So that’s how that ended.”
– Saxon says that he complained to Ye that he was “ill due to his severe injury on his back and that he needs to rest.” However, “Defendant disregarded Plaintiff’s concerns and instead responded by asking to discuss the next phase of the project.”
– Ron Zambrano, Saxon’s attorney, also represents a gym teacher at Ye’s Donda Academy who filed suit in July over unsafe conditions. Among other things, the school did not contain windows, because, according to the teacher’s lawsuit, Ye “did not like glass.”
– “What we’re seeing are the symptoms of Kanye’s inability to respect people’s time and pay for them,” Zambrano says. “He goes into people’s lives: ‘I have an idea, I have lots of money, you have to drop everything in the world and I promise to pay you.’ Then he gets bored and goes somewhere else and normal people get left in the lurch.” Zambrano adds that if you “do the math,” potential damages could add up to “seven figures.”
