A man who says he was injured while working at Kanye West’s $57 million Malibu beach mansion — and allegedly fired for refusing to run carbon monoxide–spewing generators indoors — is asking a jury to award him $1.7 million in damages from the artist now known as Ye.
Plaintiff Tony Saxon sat in a Los Angeles courtroom Monday as his lawyer, Ron Zambrano, revealed the requested award for the first time during the two-week civil trial. If jurors decide Ye acted with malice, they could tack on hefty punitive damages, too.
In clashing closing arguments, Zambrano and Ye’s lawyer, Andrew Cherkasky, offered starkly different interpretations of the evidence. Zambrano said Saxon, 35, was clearly hired as an employee, and that he produced thousands of pages of records to prove his case. By comparison, Ye’s legal team handed over 19 pages, he said.
“He kept things that were embarrassing, and he still presented it to you,” Zambrano said of his client. “Mr. Saxon, for all his layers, was transparent with you. He has been victimized, and he got hurt.”
Among Saxon’s submissions, Zambrano said, were 94 pages of text messages exchanged with Ye during Saxon’s seven weeks overseeing demolition work and security at the beachfront residence designed by the Pritzker Prize–winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando. Ye bought the house in 2021 and ordered it stripped of plumbing, toilets, fixtures, cabinets, electricity, a jacuzzi, and a concrete chimney topped with two custom 30-foot stainless steel stacks, jurors heard. (Ye later sold the house for $21 million in September 2024, marking a steep loss.)
Cherkasky, when it was his turn, branded Saxon a liar who had “a great time” voluntarily staying at Ye’s “castle on the beach” until Ye cut him loose. Saxon later fabricated a story about an injury and unpaid wages for an undeserved payday, the lawyer claimed. “The lies are so deep and so wicked, not a thing can be believed that came out of his mouth,” Cherkasky said, calling Saxon a “professional victim.”
Cherkasky also praised Ye for showing up Friday, on time, and taking the witness stand. As Rolling Stone previously reported, Ye struggled to keep his eyes open. “He answered the questions. He wasn’t sleeping. He was bored. This is beneath him,” Cherkasky said Monday.
The lawyer then blasted Saxon’s camp for grilling Ye’s wife, Bianca Censori, on the witness stand Thursday over the fact that she signed some documents on Ye’s behalf during the case. She told jurors she had a “POA,” apparently meaning power of attorney.
“The convenience of a wife signing something is no fraud, no sketchiness, no ‘conservatorship’ whatsoever,” Cherkasky argued. “It’s just the personal touch a wife may give her superstar husband.”
Censori, who worked on the Ando house as well, told jurors Ye had an aversion to stairs and windows, preferring “ramps and slides” instead, and “trying mesh as the barrier between indoor and out.” She also claimed Saxon told her he was a licensed contractor. Saxon denies this.
In his rebuttal closing argument, Zambrano said Ye hardly deserved a “participation prize” for his three hours of testimony. “Who’s been here the rest of the time? You guys,” Zambrano told the jury of seven women and five men.
Zambrano centered his closing arguments on claims that Ye was gutting the Ando house without permits and hired Saxon not as a licensed contractor, but to keep the project discreet. He highlighted a message from Censori in a group text chain that read: “No permitting increases caution.”
Zambrano said Ye terminated Saxon after he injured his back and started asking questions. Ye and Censori, who testified she was working as Yeezy’s head of architecture at the time, clearly knew Saxon was injured, the lawyer argued, pointing to more texts.
“I hurt my back and have been taking it easy,” Saxon wrote in one message to Ye shown on a screen in court. “My back is so fucked,” Saxon wrote in a separate message to Censori. In other texts, Saxon asked whether he could see a chiropractor who regularly visited Ye’s warehouse office in Los Angeles. In one thread to Censori, he wrote, “I can’t live here anymore,” adding that he asked Ye to hire new security.
Zambrano said Saxon was a vintage records dealer and performer who billed himself to Ye as a “guy with a van,” not a professional contractor. “Tony is not a general contractor. He never was. Everyone knew that,” Zambrano argued. He said Ye’s failure to secure workers’ compensation insurance for the Ando house renovation left him responsible for Saxon’s past and future harm.
According to Zambrano, the $240,000 that Saxon received from Ye was used to pay workers and buy supplies. He said only $65,315 was left in Saxon’s accounts when he was fired. The lawyer also highlighted a notation in bank records where Ye’s accountant wrote that a $120,000 wire transfer to Saxon on Oct. 15, 2021, was for “Ando Project Management.” Zambrano also said Ye texted Saxon in a manner that was controlling him as an employee.
“He’s looking for updates as a homeowner, as a person who hires a contractor,” Cherkasky countered. “Your passion about the outcome of [your home] is not an invitation to have [someone] become an employee.” Cherkasy argued that when Saxon texted Ye, “Please trust the process,” and “This will be done right,” he was acting in his capacity as an independent contractor.
During the two-week trial, jurors heard potentially pivotal testimony from handyman Jeromy Holding, who corroborated Saxon’s claims that the project had no permits, and nobody considered Saxon the right guy to handle permitting. Holding said he heard the residence was destined to serve variously as a private school location, a bomb shelter, a monastery, a recording studio, and a playground with slides and ramps. He claimed Ye yelled at Saxon to work faster.
In her own full day of testimony, Censori resisted the idea that the project was rushed and chaotic. She described Ye’s evolving directives as “iterations” of an overarching vision that remained constant. “This was all concepts. The idea that it changed is not necessarily correct. When he would describe ideas, it was holistically his concept. It was always going to be a residence. That was never changing.”
In his Friday testimony, Ye 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. Speaking in monotone, he answered “I don’t recall” to dozens of questions. He admitted he hired Saxon to execute his vision for the Ando house but did not elaborate.
Jurors are expected to start deliberating on Tuesday, the judge said.
The subdued testimony came a little more than a month after Ye took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, apologizing for his long hisotry of antisemitic remarks. “I’m not asking for sympathy, or a free pass, though I aspire to earn your forgiveness,” Ye wrote in the apology published Jan. 26. “I write today simply to ask for your patience and understanding as I find my way home.”
Saxon’s case is the first to reach a jury among a wave of civil complaints filed by people who worked for Ye over the past six years. The musician, 48, has faced more than a dozen lawsuits after he went on a highly publicized Twitter tirade in October 2022, tweeting his now-infamous plan to “go death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE.” Weeks later, Rolling Stone published an investigation into the allegedly “toxic” work environment at his Yeezy label, where Ye purportedly told one staffer that “skinheads and Nazis were his greatest inspiration.”
Last year, Ye again posted inflammatory messages on X, formerly Twitter, writing “IM A NAZI,” and “I LOVE HITLER.” Days after that, he aired a Super Bowl commercial promoting Yeezy.com, where he later sold shirts emblazoned with swastikas. Last May, he released a single titled “Heil Hitler,” which was quickly removed from most digital streaming services.
