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Kanye West has been forced to settle a class action lawsuit regarding his Yeezy brand, being ordered to send through a six-figure payout.
On Wednesday (October 30), InTouch reported that Ye’s apparel line agreed to cough up the money to resolve a lawsuit brought about by former employees of the organization.
According to court documents, ex-employees Taliah Leslie and Shelby Grochowski asked the court to approve the deal they negotiated with West and his associates out of court.
West and his brand will pay $625,000 to settle the case.
Leslie and Grochowski started working with Yeezy in November 2019 as an assistant designer and assistant patternmaker, respectively.
They both claimed to have been classified as independent contractors when they should have been non-exempt employees. It was alleged that Yeezy and West “eventually reclassified [Grochowski] as an employee despite giving him the same job duties, but misclassified him as exempt from overtime when his true classification should have been non-exempt.”
The lawsuit claimed: “Defendants failed to compensate Plaintiff and the Aggrieved Employees for off- the-clock work on the jobsite, for compulsory travel to and from out-of-town locations (including travel to Cody, Wyoming, and Paris, France), for compulsory travel to and from the out-of-town jobsites, and for other off-the-clock work, which Plaintiff and the aggrieved employees performed with Defendants’ knowledge and/or consent.
“This resulted in Defendant failing to compensate all overtime hours worked when Plaintiff and Aggrieved Employees worked over eight hours in one day or forty hours in one week. Defendants also failed to compensate other Aggrieved Employees who were misclassified as exempt from overtime pay.”
This isn’t the only fashion-related lawsuit West has settled recently.
Earlier this week, the “Power” rapper and adidas settled their years-long legal battle, which dated back to the company cutting ties with the rapper and producer back in 2022 over his antisemitic comments.
Reuters reported the company announced that the parties had reached an out-of-court settlement that concluded all of the cases between them.
Both parties said we don’t need to fight anymore and withdrew all the claims,” company CEO Bjørn Gulden said on a conference call, per Complex. “The agreement didn’t include any payments. No one owes anybody anything anymore. So whatever was is history.
“There were tensions on many issues, and… when you put the claims on the right side and you put the claims on the left side, both parties said we don’t need to fight anymore and withdrew all the claims,” Gulden continued.
The settlement occurred two years almost to the day from when West was dropped by adidas.
