Aggrieved handyman gets $140,000 payback in civil trial against Kanye West

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A downtown Los Angeles jury on Wednesday ordered Kanye West, or Ye, as he is now known, to pay a handyman $140,000 for lost wages and medical expenses incurred while supervising a disastrous remodel of a $57 million seaside house in Malibu, California — a far cry from the $1.7 million he sought.

Tony Saxon, who was hired by Ye to supervise the transformation of the “Ando house” into an “off-the-grid” bunker, declined to comment as he strode away from court. His attorney, Ron Zambrano of West Coast Trial Lawyers, admitted the verdict was disappointing and that he still had to “process it,” but added, “I’m happy for Tony that he has some vindication.” He also pointed out that under the law, his firm is entitled to seek fees and costs, which could be a steep figure.

Ye’s spokesperson Milo Yiannopoulos, the controversial right-wing political commentator, said the jury’s decision was “probably unsatisfying for everyone” but that it was a “financial catastrophe” for the plaintiff’s attorneys. He added that they would be filing a motion against the award of attorneys’ fees since Saxon was acting as an unlicensed contractor.

“This is not over yet,” Yiannopoulos said, outside the courthouse.

The “Ando house” gets its name from its world-renowned architect, Tadao Ando. With its stark concrete walls and floors, it was called an “architectural treasure.” But Ye wanted to put his own stamp on it. He wanted the plumbing and electricity taken off the public grid. He had the home’s floor-to-ceiling windows, its jacuzzi and chimneys removed. And he wanted the stairs gone — according to testimony by his wife, Bianca Censori, Ye “didn’t like stairs” — to be replaced by ramps or slides.

Saxon functioned as the project manager, the conduit between Ye and a team of construction workers. As the de facto security guard, Saxon also slept on the concrete floor of the house on a bare mattress.

He worked on the project for six or seven weeks, until Ye demanded that he cut the house’s power. Running gas generators to power tools and lights would attract unwanted attention to an unpermitted construction job, and taking the generators inside would fill the house with carbon monoxide. Saxon balked. Ye called him an “enemy” and fired him.

“My client didn’t want to work while breathing in carbon dioxide,” Zambrano told the jury during his closing argument. “And he was fired. You cannot be fired for following the law.”

It was one of a number of Zambrano’s arguments that the jury didn’t buy. They found little evidence that Saxon had refused the order to move the generator indoors, according to one of the jurors who spoke to Courthouse News after the verdict, though he declined to give his name, other than Juror #7.

“It felt like Ye wasn’t getting the level of work done that he wanted,” he said.

The jury had the opportunity to award damages to Saxon for unpaid wages, overtime, wrongful termination and personal injury, for a back injury Saxon says he suffered while demolishing parts of the Ando house. They rejected the unpaid wages claims, choosing to only compensate Saxon for his workplace injury: $100,000 for past and future economic loss, $40,000 for pain and suffering. They also passed on awarding Saxon punitive damages. Zambrano had asked for more than a million dollars in compensation for the injury, which he said would affect Saxon for years to come.

Ye’s attorney, Andrew Cherkasky, mocked Saxon during his closing argument as a “failure” and “professional victim” who “tried to defraud one of the world’s biggest superstars.” He showed the jury a video of Saxon performing a doo-wop song onstage, dancing and undulating — proof, he argued, that he was “just fine.”

“The evidence pointed to him sustaining some level of injury,” Juror #7 said. “It felt fair to cover medical expenses in the past and the future,” adding that it did not seem like a “monumental life-changing injury.” The $40,000, he said, amounted to two weeks of pay for Saxon, who had claimed he was promised $20,000 per week.

The 10-day trial featured a star witness: Ye himself, though his testimony didn’t live up to the hype. The rapper and fashion mogul answered most of Zambrano’s questions with “Yes,” “No,” “I’m not sure” or “I don’t recall" and appeared to be struggling to stay awake throughout the three-hour ordeal.

“He wasn’t sleeping,” Cherkasky insisted. “He was bored.” He added: “Ye doesn’t remember anything about [Saxon]. Why would he?”

Cherkasky chose not to cross-examine his client and to call only one witness, Yiannopoulos. He was asked only to testify about a small detail — whether or not Saxon had deleted a video from his Instagram page that had already been entered into evidence. The trial was dominated by Saxon’s testimony and Cherkasky’s brutal cross-examination of him. In his closing argument, Cherkasky mocked Saxon as a “failure” and “professional victim” who “tried to defraud one of the world’s biggest superstars.”

“I wouldn’t put a ton of stock into what Ye or Tony were saying,” Juror #7 said.

This is the first of a dozen or so lawsuits filed against Ye by former employees to go to trial. Many of the other plaintiffs worked at Donda Academy, Ye’s short-lived private school where students reportedly ate sushi every day.

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