Ye Ordered to Pay $140K in Malibu Mansion Lawsuit

UPDATE Mar 11, 2026 3:05 PM CDT

The rapper formerly known as Kanye West has been ordered to pay $140,000 plus lawyers' fees and court costs to the renovation project manager at his former Malibu mansion. The jury, however, declined to award the $1.7 million in compensatory damages Tony Saxon was seeking, finding that he was not wrongfully terminated, Variety reports. Saxon's lawyers said he was owed thousands in unpaid wages and had been wrongfully fired after injuring his neck—and after he refused to comply with demands he saw as dangerous, including replacing outside electricity with generators. The verdict was announced Wednesday morning. During the trial, which began Feb. 23, Ye appeared sleepy and answered most questions with, "I don't recall." He also urged Saxon's attorneys to call him "Ye" instead of "Mr. Ye," reports NBC News.

Sep 13, 2023 1:51 PM CDT

"You can't keep food in that house, because you had no refrigerator left. You had no windows. I had sea gulls flying in." If those sound like the concerns of an exasperated homeowner, you'd be wrong. They're the complaints of the "jack of all trades" who was hired by Ye—the former Kanye West—to oversee construction at his new Malibu home and is now suing the rapper over alleged labor code violations that include dangerous working conditions and unpaid wages. In the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Tony Saxon alleges he was fired after not complying with what he describes as Ye's dangerous construction demands, including that all windows and electricity be torn out of the rapper's $57 million home and large generators placed inside.

Rolling Stone reports Saxon was hired in September 2021 to serve as the project manager for all work being done on the home. Per the suit, that meant hiring contractors, overseeing demolition and construction work, and providing 24/7 security. Saxon says things truly came to a head about two months in, when he injured his neck and back while working and wasn't granted the time off he sought. "When Plaintiff refused to engage in unlawful conduct or to engage in activity that would further cause him physical injury, Mr. Ye responded: '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,'" per the suit, which captures Saxon's burn: He responded that he doesn't watch TV.

He says Ye fired him on Nov. 5, 2021, after roughly two months of work. Saxon, 32, says Ye agreed to pay him $20,000 a week but only made two payments: a $20,000 payment for one week of work and $100,000 for construction costs. In an interview with NBC News, Saxon said Ye wanted to morph the beach house into "a bomb shelter from the 1910s" that was inaccessible to the government. "He wants to have an alternate source of energy. He wants to have no doors, no windows, no fixtures, just concrete."