Kanye West, the musician known as Ye, has been ordered to pay another $181,433 in his Malibu mansion debacle, seven months after a jury found him liable for $140,000 in damages to Tony Saxon at trial. In a new ruling obtained by Rolling Stone, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Brock Hammond ordered West to pay $147,000 in attorneys’ fees and $34,433.93 in costs to Saxon’s legal team at West Coast Trial Lawyers. The firm had sought substantially more, but Hammond initially proposed an even smaller award.
After Saxon’s lawyer, Ron Zambrano, challenged the tentative amount as too low, the judge reconsidered and increased it. Though I believe the value of what we brought to get Mr. Saxon his verdict is above where Judge Hammond ultimately landed,” Zambrano tells Rolling Stone.
A spokesman for West gloated and called the ruling “humiliating” for the other side, but Ye’s lawyers had argued that Saxon should receive no attorneys’ fees at all. Saxon sued West in 2003 and told jurors last March that he suffered serious injuries while living and working at the Malibu mansion that West purchased for $57 million in 2021. Saxon testified that West planned to turn the luxury beachfront home, designed by prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando, into an off-the-grid bunker.
He said West ordered workers to remove the home’s plumbing, toilets, fixtures, cabinets, electrical systems and a built-in concrete fireplace. West sold the gutted property three years later for $21 million, $36 million less than he paid for it. Saxon said he was misclassified as an independent contractor and severely injured his back and neck on the project.
He claimed West failed to secure workers’ compensation coverage and that he was still owed substantial compensation. He asked for $1.7 million in compensatory damages. In a mixed verdict, the jury awarded $100,000 for past and future medical expenses and another $40,000 for past pain and suffering.
Jurors declined to award any damages for future pain and suffering and did not impose punitive damages. They found Saxon had not been wrongfully terminated and that West did not engage in “malice, oppression, or fraud.” “It took a lot of discussion to get to $140,000. Some people wanted to go higher,” a juror who spoke with Rolling Stone on condition of anonymity explained.
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