Kanye West has been ordered to pay an additional $181,433 following a lawsuit tied to the gut renovation of his former Malibu beach house, bringing the total award in the case to $321,000.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brock Hammond issued the ruling on Tuesday in a motion filed by lawyers for Tony Saxon, a handyman who was awarded $140,000 by a jury in March in an employment suit against Ye. Hammond heard arguments on October 7 and took the issues under submission before ordering $147,000 in attorneys' fees and $34,435 in costs for Saxon's legal team at West Coast Trial Lawyers.
Saxon had sought far more — $1.23 million in fees and costs — while Ye's attorneys argued that any award should not exceed $59,425. In their opposition, West's lawyers stated that the plaintiff was asking for 8.83 times what the jury awarded him on a claim 'that ... was proved through one physician in an action in which twelve of thirteen theories failed,' adding that the request should be 'denied in its entirety as unreasonably inflated.'
Saxon's lawyers had countered that the $1.23 million was fair, citing the work of three West Coast Trial Lawyers attorneys and compensation for a paralegal. They described the case as involving a 'complex and interwoven mix of rights' under California employment and labor law, and noted it was a 'huge financial expense' for the firm, which they said spent over $300,000 on the case.
The underlying lawsuit alleged that Saxon — who is not a licensed contractor — sustained severe neck and back injuries while living and working at the luxury beach home West had hoped to transform into an off-the-grid bunker. Saxon maintained that Ye, 49, agreed to pay him $20,000 per week under a 2021 deal but handed over just one $20,000 payment plus $100,000 for construction costs. The jury's original verdict awarded Saxon $100,000 for past and future medical expenses and $40,000 for past pain and suffering.
'I respect Judge Hammond's openness to consider my argument why his initial assessment was perhaps missing a critical point,' Saxon's lawyer Ron Zambrano told Rolling Stone, though he added, 'I believe the value of what we brought to get Mr. Saxon his verdict is above where Judge Hammond ultimately landed.' Meanwhile, in a statement to Billboard, West's spokesperson Milo Yiannopoulos called the ruling 'fittingly humiliating' for Zambrano's co-counsel, Neama Rahmani.
West purchased the Tadao Ando-designed oceanfront property for $57 million in 2021 before beginning work aimed at turning the modernist home into a concrete bunker. The stripped-down renovation became one of the stranger celebrity real estate sagas in recent memory — windows removed, interiors gutted — before West sold the property. The latest ruling ensures that the legal fallout from that ill-fated project will follow him a while longer.