The artist previously generally known as Kanye West is being sued after a former property supervisor and caretaker stated Ye fired him when he refused to take away all the home windows and electrical energy from the rapper’s Malibu dwelling.
A former undertaking supervisor and property caretaker for Kanye West stated the artist fired him after he refused to take away all of the home windows and electrical energy from Ye’s Malibu dwelling, in keeping with a lawsuit filed on Wednesday.
Tony Saxon, a property caretaker for the artist previously generally known as Kanye West, refused to maneuver giant mills into the house, after which Ye ordered him to “get the hell out,” telling him he can be “thought-about an enemy if he didn’t comply,” in keeping with the grievance filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court docket.
“When Plaintiff refused to have interaction in illegal conduct or to have interaction in exercise that may additional trigger him bodily harm, Mr. Ye responded: ‘In case you don’t do what I say, you’re not going to work for me, I’m not gonna be your pal anymore, and also you’ll simply see me on TV,” the lawsuit says, including that Saxon stated he doesn’t watch TV.
Ye in the end fired Saxon, who additionally labored for him as a safety guard and caretaker on the property, for not complying together with his “harmful” requests, in keeping with the lawsuit. Saxon labored for Ye for about two months and alleged that the rapper promised to pay him $20,000 per week however solely made two funds – one to cowl Saxon’s weekly wage and one other for the undertaking’s finances.
“I all the time had his greatest pursuits in thoughts as a pal,” says the 32-year-old Saxon in an interview, evaluating the occasions that led to his firing to a pal stopping one other pal from driving drunk. “They get actually mad that you simply overstepped your boundaries, however nonetheless, they may have gotten actually harm.”
The lawsuit alleges a number of labor code violations, together with harmful working circumstances, unpaid wages, and wrongful retaliatory termination. Saxon’s lawyer, Ron Zambrano – the identical lawyer representing the previous dancers suing Lizzo – stated that the rapper “has proven a reckless disregard towards his staff and has flouted the regulation in unbelievably harmful methods all through this complete undertaking on the Malibu home.”
“He continues his sample of not paying his payments whereas treating employees terribly. No worker ought to should endure by the type of working circumstances Mr. Saxon was pressured to endure, but Ye confirmed no concern and merely wished the work carried out, regardless of the hazardous and unsafe, to not point out unlawful actions he was attempting to drive the plaintiff to undertake,” writes Zambrano.
Saxon describes himself as a “jack of all trades” with a background in music, design, and building and stated Kanye West employed him by a referral. He stated that Ye’s imaginative and prescient for the seashore home – which he purchased in September 2021 in a reportedly off-market deal – was to make a “bomb shelter from the 1910s” by demolishing the customized marble loos, eradicating the customized home windows, plumbing, and electrical energy, and changing the steps with slides.
“We have been going to be gutting all of that out and type of constructing him a Bat Cave,” the place he stated he might “cover from the Clintons and the Kardashians,” stated Saxon, who provides that he initially believed Ye was in search of to make an “artwork undertaking,” not a habitable house. “As we progress, it’s changing into clear that, no, he desires to stay right here.”
However Ye stated he wished no electrical energy, solely crops. He solely wished candles and battery lights, and he wished every little thing “open and darkish,” in keeping with Saxon.
“You’ll be able to’t preserve meals in that home, since you had no fridge left,” Saxon stated. “You had no home windows. I had seagulls flying in.”
Ye allegedly instructed Saxon that he didn’t need to be a “slave” to trendy conveniences, and he didn’t need to be “accessible” to the federal government.
“He desires to be on a privatized WiFi community,” says Saxon. “He desires to have an alternate supply of vitality. He desires to don’t have any doorways, no home windows, no fixtures, simply concrete.”
The lawsuit was filed by the identical attorneys suing Ye over allegations associated to his personal college, Donda Academy, and its predecessor, Yeezy Christian Academy. A lawsuit filed in April by two former Donda Academy lecturers alleges a weird assortment of guidelines, together with bans on chairs, art work on the partitions, climbing the steps, and outdoors meals, when the varsity menu solely included sushi, in keeping with the swimsuit.
Academics describe an establishment with no disciplinary system regardless of an issue with bullying. In the meantime, a separate swimsuit from the previous assistant principal says that the varsity had no electrical energy after opening in August 2021. A trial is ready to start in April 2025.