Kanye West LOSES civil case over $57m house

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0:36It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains. A man straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. He whispers to himself, It's time to put my balls on the dashboard. As he starts the engine. In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance unconscious. In 15 years, he's a billionaire. This is Toto Wolff, Formula One's most powerful team boss and the breakout star of Drive to Survive. This week on Good, Bad, Billionaire, how Toto Wolff made his billions. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:10Hello and welcome back to Fame Under Fire from BBC Sounds with me, Anushka Matanda-Doughty. Today, Kanye or Ye on trial. The controversial rapper has been in court this week fighting against a$1.7 million claim brought by a former employee, Tony Saxon, who worked on one of his houses. Saxon said that West withheld wages and made him work long hours in unsafe conditions, including telling him he could not leave the property and waking him up at 3am to ask why he's not working. The jury were shown a picture of a small mattress on a concrete floor that Saxon claims he slept on while working at the property in Malibu.

1:47In closing arguments, Ye's lawyer Andrew Chukaski depicted Saxon as an unreliable witness, saying, quote the lies are so deep and so wicked that not a thing can be believed that came out of his mouth he also said that saxon was a quote professional victim but the jury has ruled in saxon's favor and a 140 000 payout for lost wages and medical expenses is headed kanye's way this trial in true yay fashion has not been traditional for one he appeared to fall asleep on the stand although his lawyer argued against this saying he wasn't asleep he was bored saying this is quote beneath him we have all the details of what went down so of course joining me right now to go through it all is our resident trial attorney sean kent from south carolina hi sean hey anuska how are you guys doing i'm good were you looking down at all those ai fruit videos i've been sending you if you send me one more ai fruit video with an orange or a banana we will fight you because why are they always cheating on each other and it's like what a Molina but okay so yeah I think that this is more important than whatever trial you're prepping for at the moment of course no not at all but second to that second to those AI videos and importance is this Kanye West trial potentially the first of many he's involved in a lot of different civil litigation we've been through some of it in this program if you don't know what I'm talking about go and listen to the episode we did on Lauren Pisocha his former personal assistant with Arik Fadali as her lawyer but Sean this is another civil case.

3:16We have a verdict on this one, but can you just remind everybody the difference between civil and criminal? The easiest way to talk about it is if you are sued civilly, you're not going to go to jail. This is about your money and or your property. If you're sued criminally, that is about your personal liberty, that there is a chance criminally that you can be incarcerated. Yeah, call Diddy and see how he feels about that. Diddy would pay any amount to get out as he tried. Yeah, multiple times. Well, let's talk about the case then. For those of you who haven't been following along to what's been going on in court with Kanye, or as he prefers to be called, Ye West.

3:50We have our plaintiff. Can you just define plaintiff for me? So a plaintiff is the person who is filing a lawsuit. So for argument's sake, if I wanted to file a lawsuit against Anushka for sending me just awful Instagram videos of bananas and oranges and so forth, I would be the plaintiff. I would be suing Anushka. That sounds so bad out of context. Jesus Christ. That sounds so wrong. If you didn't listen to the beginning of the program, it's AI dancing fruit. That's actually very funny. I think about it. Apologize, apologize. Redact, redact, redact. If you are bringing a lawsuit and somebody has done something wrong to you, if you have slipped and fell in a grocery store, if you are hit by a car, you are the plaintiff because you want to sue because you say that this person has caused you damages.

4:42OK, so we have our plaintiff, handyman Tony Saxon. He says he was injured while working at Ye West's$57 million Malibu beach mansion in 2021. And he claimed he was fired for refusing to run carbon monoxide spewing generators indoors. As with all civil cases, it started with a lawsuit that was filed in 2023, alleging labor code violations and retaliation. Sean, we'll get into labor code violations in a little minute. But retaliation, what exactly does that mean legally? Well, retaliation can mean a lot of things, Anishka. Usually a retaliatory claim means because I have done something, because I have complained, because I have brought a lawsuit, because I have said something, you have retaliated against me.

5:23You have cost me resources and cost me money. And so that's why I'm bringing this action against you. OK, so let me walk you through what took place on the stand. So Tony, the plaintiff, was actually the first witness on the stand. He told the court that Ye West hired him as a project manager overseeing the aggressive gutting of a contemporary poured concrete home designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, which Ye purchased for$57.3 million earlier that same year. Now, he ends up overall working for Ye for six weeks. In this time, he claims that he was asked to do things that went above and beyond what he had originally agreed.

5:58For instance, he said one day when he returned to the house one night, he learned that the night watchman, so some security, had been fired. And he said that Kanye's response was to say, quote, since you're going to be there so much running shifts, you should be the security. Ye allegedly told Saxon, stay here now, quote, stay here now. You can't leave. You're now working security as well as doing the construction. Saxon showed the jury a picture of a bare concrete floor with a mattress on it that he claims he slept on during his time working for Ye If you're with us on iPlayer, we'll put that on the screen now Saxon said that on one occasion he woke to find Ye towering over his small makeshift bed He says, quote, he stood over me and asked, why are you not working?

6:40It was like 3, 4 in the morning. I said, I have to sleep some time Saxon also highlighted how big the job was He said, quote, he wanted to turn the home into an open concept off the grid bunker with privatized Wi-Fi and renewable energy. Quote, he didn't want to be connected to the city's power grid or water grid. Later on in the trial, Tony Saxon is asked how the house would function without a public water supply. And he testified that Ye proposed a system in which, quote, his urine and feces be treated into fresh water for drinking and bathing for him. saxon says he consulted plumbers and other experts about the concept but no such system was installed before his termination interesting it all comes to an end saxon claims when he was fired after raising concerns that three large generators installed after the home's electricity was removed posed a risk of fatal carbon monoxide poisoning he said that yay west kanye responded saying quote if you don't do what i asked you to do you're a clinton you're a kardashian you're an enemy you're only going to see me on tv saxon also said that kanye owes him tens of thousands in unpaid wages and that due to unsafe work conditions he was injured on the job now he asked the jury for 1.7 million dollars in damages to be awarded to him yay's team of course argued against all of this they said the evidence would show saxon was an unlicensed contractor who unilaterally destroyed the quote architectural gem while working as an independent contractor not an employee.

8:10They also said that Kanye's bank records would show that he paid Tony Saxon $240 ,000. Now, the emphasis on working as an independent contractor, does that mean, why are they bringing that up? Does that mean you're not protected by labor codes? What's the relevance of that legally? You're exactly right. And I'm going to try to make it as simple as possible, Anushka. There are two distinctions. You are either a full-time employee. And as a full-time employee, you are guaranteed certain rights no matter where the state is. And you work, anybody who's out there working, you know, your boss has to guarantee you certain rights, workers' comp rights.

8:42If you fall down the stairs at work, you get certain benefits and there are certain regulations, certain codes, things that must be taken into consideration when you're working in somebody. Work hours, things of this nature, as opposed to an independent contractor. An independent contractor can be, and I'm going to make this simple, if you pay a little boy to come cut your grass and you give him$10 and he does a bad job, that's it. So the argument on their spot is this guy is an independent contractor. He is an unlicensed. He was not qualified. We hired him. We gave him a break and we paid him a bunch of money to do this.

9:17He does not get the benefits and the qualifications as a full time employee that he would if he was because he is simply just an independent contractor. Some guy off the streets who made a quarter of a million dollars. I think the quote, he should have quit while he was ahead. He got a decent amount of money out of us, and he wasn't good at what he did. And so that is the battle that was going back and forth is, was he an independent contractor who was well-paid, contracted, licensed for what he did? And I don't mean contracted and licensed as in he was a licensed contractor. But they went to an agreement.

9:53You know what? We're going to pay you blank. We're going to pay you$20 ,000 a day. This is your job, and that's what he was paid for. That's it. There's much more qualifications if you are a full-time employee and full-time things that you're entitled to. Now, Sean, like you said, that's the back and forth that went down in court around that particular element that's to do with the labor code violation. There's a jury there. There's seven women. There's four men. What is the bar for the civil case? Can you remind me? Because it's not. It's something else. Fill me in. First, when you're looking at a criminal case, the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt.

10:30OK, that beyond a reasonable doubt standard is what we always talk about. The people versus Sean Diddy Combe, people versus Arendal James Simpson. That is the standard is so high. It is the highest standard under the law. It is because when you're trying to put someone in jail, Anushka, the law wants to make sure we really, really, really know that they have done it. We really want to make sure when we're looking at the state of California, state of South Carolina, state of New York, if you're trying to incarcerate somebody, your evidence better be damn good. Almost to the point you know it for a certainty, beyond a reasonable doubt.

11:08In a civil concept, it is a much lower burden. It's a preponderance of the evidence, okay? It's almost like a more likely than not standard. So it is more likely, more reasonable to believe that this probably happened. I know that seems lower, but it's a preponderance of the evidence standard. If you picture a scale, some people say, you know, your scales are right here. It's almost like the plaintiff has just got to tip the scale slightly to prove how much evidence they have. Now, if the plaintiff only tips the scale slightly, the belief is that's how much money they should award. If the plaintiff believes that you really tipped the hell out of the scales, you've really done it, you've really gone way beyond that preponderance of the evidence, then the damages can be real higher.

11:56So to go back, reasonable doubt here, preponderance evidence is just a much lower standard. Okay, so we've got a firm grasp of the situation at hand. Back into the courtroom, this is what happens. Bianca, who we've seen a lot from, I think would be a fair way to say, we've seen a lot from Bianca in the public media. She's been referred to as a performance artist as well. You might know her from like famously turning up in a barely there dress recently. at an event. She took the stand. She is Kanye West, Ye West's wife. And a key part of her testimony was introducing the idea that Tony Saxon had told her he was licensed when he wasn't.

12:32Why does that matter, Sean? That goes back to our independent contractor versus an actual employee. If he was actually an employee, he would have been licensed. He would have had his papers. He would have had everything. And it goes to our example of you just hired a little boy to come cut your grass. He is not a licensed individual. He is somebody doing a part-time gig who is doing a favor from you. It is Anushka calling her father over to, hey, the wiring ain't working in the house. Can you come fix this real quick? And he doesn't know what he's doing and he just tries to do it. He is an unlicensed person who should not be paid the same as a licensed employee who has a certified contract.

13:12And in this case as well, the argument coming from Tony Saxon's side was that there were no permits. It was an unsafe working environment. It was an ever moving target of what Kanye wanted done to the house. And part of what Bianca goes on to say is, well, actually, he told us he was actually unlicensed. And part of the reason he wanted to not apply for permits and keep things under wrap was that he didn't want people to find out he was working on this unlicensed. So that comes into that side of the argument as well. But she later testified that Saxon, quote, interjected himself into being at the center of the ambitious and ever morphing project and said it wasn't uncommon for people in Ye's circle to oversell themselves.

13:51She says, quote, people will say yes to him just so they can stay in his orbit for opportunities. She said once she was removed from the situation, because she was taken out, she's an architect, she left at one point, there was an opportunity for someone else to step in, which he did. So that's a very different tale from what Tony Saxon was saying, which is he came to me, he was changing things all the time, he increased my workload, my responsibility, I'm a security guard and a handyman. I'm doing this, that 16 hour days. And she's saying, well, you stepped up and you offered to do that so you could stay in the orbit of Yay West.

14:22But we also have a corroborating witness that comes on for Tony Saxon. Corroborating. Did I say it right? No, you said it right. But you were very convinced I'm not going to mess this up. So I'm going to corroborating witness. Oh, I'll take a day off. Take a day off. I can't even get annoyed at you, can I? No. No. No. Okay. We have a corroborating witness on the stand, Jeremy Holding, who was another worker working on the house with Tony Saxon. And he's kind of backing up what Tony was saying. The defense had argued at one point that Tony Saxon had quit, left. He wasn't terminated. So therefore, any unpaid wages, any of that, he's not entitled to.

15:04That's not Ye's responsibility. Actually, Bianca, in her testimony, she said he was fired. So she seems to have gone against what Ye's own lawyers were saying, which is, hey, you never know what someone's going to say. You never know what's going to say. You're my little lawyer. You don't know what people are going to say when you put them on the stand. But Jeremy comes on and tells this story, which basically speaks to the idea that it was pretty common for Ye to threaten to fire people, which Bianca also said. She said he would fire people if they didn't gel with him. A lot of people didn't gel with his personality type.

15:33We know he has a pretty unique personality. I think we can say that. We the people. Jeremy came in and told the juries that Ye nearly fired him during his first week. He recalled pulling into the oceanfront job on his second or third day and spotting a woman crossing in front of his van and he waves enthusiastically, thinking it was Bianca Sensori, Kanye's current wife, who was an architectural designer on the project, who he had already met. So he's waving, waving, waving. He testified the woman lowered her sunglasses as if to say, I don't know you, and walked away. He recalled Ye later introduced the woman as his wife at the time, Miss Kim Kardashian.

16:11Kim Kardashian. And he says, oh, you won't get that. That's a niche reference to a makeup artist on TikTok. But I'll send it to you later. I will send it to you later. Zero clue who you're talking about. Zero. I will send it to you later. Look out for that and the watermelon video. Yeah. Oh, great. Lucky me. I'm so excited. Yeah, I know you are. I keep things interesting. So he's like, okay, I'm waving at Bianca Sensori. Why isn't she waving back? She's been really weird. We just met. And this, Ye introduces it as Kim, this person is Kim Kardashian. And he says, oh, I thought you were Bianca. That's what he testified.

16:46He says that he then walked around the house and Kim Kardashian and Ye West then started arguing. He testified that she then took the kids and he got called upstairs. And he says that Kanye confronted him saying, quote, one of the most famous women in the world. And you call her by another woman's name. And he he basically demanded a response and then said, you did it on purpose. quote you did it on purpose i holding jeremy holding said his face was burning with embarrassment he offered to leave never return but eventually yay says quote nah um and he continued on the job sometimes exchanging direct messages with him but it spoke to the idea that kanye would dismiss people or threaten to dismiss people all the time which bianca also said in her statement for context yay and bianca married a year later one month after the finalization of his divorce from kim kardashian jeremy holding also appeared to back up tony saxon's account about the plans for yay's house he said yay's plans for the properties were a moving target that quote kept evolving he recalled hearing the house would serve variously as a private school location a bomb shelter a monastery or a playground with slides and ramps so he's backing up the idea there that the project was changing one day to the next and they were being asked to adjust the work that they were doing very frequently.

18:08Now, the moment of interest, shall we say, or the moment of truth for a lot of people was having Ye up on the stand himself. We don't get this in criminal trials. I always find it crazy that you get them in civil trials, that the defendant has to go on the stand, but not in criminal trials. I just find that strange. But he answered a lot of the questions, giving a simple yes or no answers, as well as saying, I don't recall. He did testify that he remembered Tony saxon having body odor and this is relevant because at one point tony saxon said you know kanye wasn't all bad at one point because i was sleeping on the floor he alleged he noticed that i i smelt really bad and he drove me in kim kardashian's car to the nobu hotel drew me a bath handed me a towel and then says this is a moment you'll never forget and then i tony saxon testified that he says yeah damn right i won't so there was there was light and shade shall we say to kanye in um tony's testimony that he gave but kanye did testify that he did remember although he didn't remember much else he remembered tony saxon having body odor he also elaborated ever so slightly on the contention that he told saxon he wanted all the electricity and plumbing taken out along with all the windows to leave the building completely off the grid he said he wanted the plumbing in the building but it was going to be quote a different system but sean My question to you is that most notably throughout being on the stand, he appeared to fall asleep, nodding off a few times, closing his eyes for a long period of time.

19:36According to Rolling Stone, he repeatedly yawned, closed his eyes for long stretches and at times seemed to catch his head falling forward as if dozing while seated on the witness stand. The publication, Rolling Stone, noted that the sleepy performance prompted glances among people in the gallery, pointing out that Ron Zambrano, the attorney for plaintiff Tony Saxon, mouthed to a fellow lawyer at one point, is he asleep? I don't get how that's not contempt of court. How is that not, you know, sir, wake up, Mr. West. Come on, I had to do that. But how is that not like, how is he not getting cautioned for that or sanctioned or whatever?

20:13There's so many ways to respond to that. Now, one, I would be upset if I was the plaintiff and the defendant fell asleep while he was on the stand or while he was doing things and the judge admonished him. And believe it or not, if I was a plaintiff, I was like, no, no, no, no, no, judge. Leave him alone. I want the jury to see how little he is taking this matter seriously. I want the jury to see that he is bored of this process. I want the jury to understand that he's not taking it seriously. Remember we talked about the preponderance and just tipping the scale. Even little things about him not taking it serious and going to sleep can affect a jury.

20:46So is it contempt of court? No. But a judge could possibly say you're not taking it serious, paying attention to my instructions. I remember once in this case, I was trying a case against a lawyer and one of the members of the jury fell asleep while he was doing this closing argument. And the juror just completely fell asleep. And he went up to the judge, tried to privately and tried to cleverly looked at the judge. And he says, your honor, one of the members of the jury is asleep. And the judge, without missing a quip, said, you put him to sleep, you wake him up. Like you're the boring one in this situation.

21:21I've always remembered that from watching that. In those situations, if your client falls asleep, that's on you and it's going to just hurt your case. So could he be held in contempt? Don't forget, that's him on the stand. That's him showing his credibility. If I'm a judge, he's showing the jury who he is and what he thinks of the case. It hurts so bad because it sends so many different messages that it even tells the jury, whatever number we give him, this doesn't mean anything to him. He doesn't care about this. He doesn't give a dang about it. It sends so many poor messages, and I didn't watch the closing arguments, but that would have been, if I was on the plaintiff's side, that would have been what I focused on.

21:59This means, this man means so little to this man. He has belittled this man so little. He has told the story of sleeping on the floor. He has told the story of being embarrassed and washed because he stinks that this man cannot have the courtesy to keep his eyes open during his day in trial. Send him a message. Like, I would be all over that during closing arguments. And I mean, having Kanye on the stand really is something because we've heard quite a lot from him recently. He took out his full page in the Wall Street Journal to apologize to the African-American community and the Jewish community.

22:33Sean, how are you feeling about that? You buying that? Sean, for people who are listening to the podcast, they cannot see what you're doing right now. I am staring at the screen with pure and utter disdain and I have my lips pursed to the point that I look like I am positively disgusted by Kanye putting this article in the paper. Is that a descriptive phrase enough, Anushka? Maybe you could have been a writer. You could have been a writer, honey. Yes, that was descriptive enough and I think tells us what you feel and think about that. However, I feel it was performative. Now, on Kanye's side of it, it was the culmination of a journey to discover the fact that he was bipolar disorder.

23:13It came at the end of a tumultuous period in his life. And he says he's taking full accountability for the people that he's hurt. But we've heard that from him. We are apparently getting an album this month. Bully is supposed to come out in March 2026. And this is the first time we've seen him on the stand, but potentially the first of many. He's facing more than a dozen civil trials. Now, we know which way this trial went. He's been found liable. Sean, can this come? Shocking. Can this come into the other cases he has coming up? Like, could the lawyers say, you've already seen him have to pay out once this year.

23:47That was just the beginning. This is the year that Kanye truly becomes monetarily accountable. No, they cannot. Everybody's case is supposed to stand on their case by themselves. The lawyer can't just blatantly come up there and say, remember, he got found guilty in this case or he found liable in this case. case. You cannot do that just blanketly, blanketly. However, however, if he gets on the stand as he did in this situation, you can use a lot of the things that he has testified to in the liability against him. One, for example, Mr. West, you're sitting here saying you have no liability, but you put this article in the front page of the paper saying you're taking accountability for all the people you've hurt.

24:29What about Mr. Blank? You have hurt him. Is he not one of the people you were covered up inside of that article, that stuff you can use against him. If he gets on the stand and says, anything that opens the door is what we call it, to liability, I have never done anything to anybody. I would never do anything to anybody. Well, this action is a yes, you did. You understand? So let's say he gets on there and says, I have never been responsible for blank. Well, now that the jury has spoken, he doesn't have that protection anymore. So that can be utilized against him on cross-exam If he ever says, I would never, I have never, I've never, he can no longer say that because it has happened.

25:09And then that can come in. Now, if it is an element of the offense of one of the charges he is found with, and somebody is saying something to the effect of in their lawsuit, this man has a pattern of being this way to people, then it could come in because it helps to prove the pattern. So I know I said blankly, no, but it really depends on the action that he's looking at. Well, Sean, thank you so much for coming and going through that with me today and fitting me in in between your like a thousand burpees that you're about to do or whatever. Sean told me about it. It's time to work out. I'm coming to London.

25:45I got to, in case I got to fight, like if I, you know, I'm looking for like, if me and Paddington Bear, and by the way, Paddington, if you're out there, I want to meet you. I love you, Paddington Bear. If Paddington Bear and I are like out there and we're going to go grab a meal or something like that, maybe we're going to go get some tea and crumpets. What is happening to you? You're turning into one of us Before too long You will only work a nine hour work day You're one of us baby Come on What is my description? I've told you If Idris Elba and Paddington Bear had a baby It would be me Don't insult Idris Thank you very much I said if he had a baby with Paddington Bear Well okay that may be as insulting when I think about that Never mind forget I said that Sorry Idris Sorry Idris Thank you very much Thank you very much Goodbye Thank you so much for having me, Anushka.

26:28Thank you. Thank you. Goodbye. Muchas gracias.

26:57Make sure you subscribe and turn on those push notifications so you never miss a thing. I'm Jamie Bartlett and for BBC Radio 4, I'll be looking at how fakery took over the world. No, no, hang on, hang on, sorry. You're not Jamie Bartlett, I'm Jamie Bartlett. Oh really? Well who am I then? I'm afraid you're not real pal. You're just an imitation chatbot I created to help me make this series on modern fakery and why it's everywhere. Sounds good. What's going to be in it? Well, there's a lot. 1980s professional wrestling, dodgy academics, AI psychosis, COVID vaccine sceptics. What's it called? Everything is fake and nobody cares.

27:41With me, Jamie Bartlett. And me, Jimmy Bartlett. Listen first on BBC Sounds.