Kanye West got in trouble with a judge Thursday for ducking his deposition in a lawsuit alleging he subjected staff and students to bigoted rants and threats at his ill-fated Donda Academy school.
At a court hearing in downtown Los Angeles, Judge Thomas Long ordered the rapper, who now goes by Ye, to pay a $2,560 fine and sit for his deposition by no later than April 30. The judge tried to set a firm date, instead of just a deadline, but Ye’s new lawyer Eduardo Martorell said he couldn’t guarantee anything. “My client is not that reasonable. I can’t reach him,” Martorell said.
“You’ve known this day of reckoning was coming,” Judge Long responded, sounding frustrated. He said if Ye refuses to comply with his order, the court would consider imposing terminating sanctions, meaning it could strike Ye’s previously filed answer and enter a default in favor of the plaintiff, Trevor Phillips.
In his discrimination and retaliation lawsuit filed last April, Phillips claimed Ye regularly spewed antisemitic and homophobic rhetoric when he worked at the Yeezy fashion brand and later Donda Academy between 2022 and 2023. Phillips said Ye threatened to punch him, claimed he wanted to shave the heads of Donda students and put them in a “cage,” gave preferential treatment to white staffers and appeared to masturbate in front of him while watching The Batman on mute. “Hitler was great. Hitler was an innovator! He invented so many things. He’s the reason we have cars,” Ye allegedly told Phillips, according to the lawsuit.
Speaking after the hearing Thursday, Phillips’ lawyer, Justin Shegerian, said he was looking forward to holding the rapper’s “feet to the fire” with the new court order. Shegerian’s firm is representing four out of more than a dozen former employees who have sued Ye and his companies over the last three years. While a handful have received an arbitration award or dismissed their cases, likely due to settlements, the majority are moving toward trial. One lawyer who represented Ye in the many of the cases parted ways with the rapper last year citing a complete breakdown in communication. Ye went unrepresented for months. Three of his companies were found in default last December for not appearing in a similar lawsuit brought by a different former Donda and Yeezy Christian Academy staffer.
Editor’s picks
“It’s clear he’s either not taking our civil justice system seriously or he’s running away from the facts that our clients claim,” Shegerian said Thursday. Asked what he thought of Ye’s post on the X platform Wednesday that read, “After further reflection I’ve come to the realization that I’m not a Nazi,” Shegerian said he wasn’t convinced. He said Ye’s history, including his recent stream of vile, antisemitic and misogynistic comments posted on X just last week, was a better guide.
“For the whole week before, he was saying that he was a Nazi. I think it’s quite clear to the general public and us, as well as what the evidence has shown in the cases that we’ve filed, that he firmly believes the antisemitic slurs that he states, whether it’s to his employees or to the public on X,” Shegerian said. Ye’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone.
During his meltdown last week, Ye started selling a swastika T-shirt and posted several pornographic videos to his feed. He also defended Sean Combs, saying the musician’s physical abuse of his ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura that was captured on hotel surveillance video showed he loved her. The posts led Ye’s talent agency to drop him as a client.
