Brian Brumfield, the lawyer of the controversial rapper Kanye West, is abandoning his nine civil cases after facing payment delays and communication problems with the rapper.
Kanye, who is popularly known as “Ye,” is currently facing 11 legal cases, and his alleged payment delays to his lawyers are only aggravating his legal troubles.
Brumfield was overseeing Ye’s famous case against Justin Poplawski, who accused the rapper of assaulting him over the request for an autograph back in 2022. Poplawski is an autograph hunter who has been collecting the signatures of iconic celebrities over the last 25 years. Ye was captured on camera punching him around 3 a.m. in Los Angeles.
Similarly, Brumfield is no longer representing Ye in the lawsuit initiated by the clothing retailer GAP, which sued him for $2 million. GAP was the former business partner of Ye, and both of them collaborated to introduce fashion brand Yeezy Gap in 2020.
However, they ended up separating their paths after facing legal troubles for doing unauthorized alterations to a building owned by Art City Center. The Center sued GAP to retrieve the costs of the damage, which in turn sued Ye and accused him of doing these alterations without GAP’s consent. Kanye has denied the allegations, asserting that he should not be held liable for these damages, and has even demanded that Gap cover his legal fees and drop the lawsuit.
Brumfield filed a motion to get his name removed from Ye’s cases, claiming that the rapper is neither paying him nor speaking with him. Meanwhile, Art City Center objected to the request, claiming that relieving the lawyer could delay the court proceedings, but the judge ruled in Brumfield’s favor and allowed him to leave the case.
Brumfield is also expected to stop defending Ye in a harassment and discrimination case, in which a former employee of Kanye’s Donda Academy accused him of promoting racism and discussing “dangerous rhetoric” in front of children.
He was also representing Ye in multiple other cases, most of which were initiated by the rapper’s former employees. One such case involved Ye’s former assistant, Lauren Pisciotta, who accused the rapper of sending her explicit text messages before firing her from the job.
Pisciotta argued that Ye promised her to pay $1 million a year if she deleted her OnlyFans account and acted “God like,” but he never paid anything at all.
Reportedly, Kanye has yet to hire a new lawyer, and insiders believe that the rapper does not compromise on anything, which makes working with him extremely difficult.
Insiders suggest that Kanye does not take lawsuits against him seriously and has yet to respond to various cases against him, which essentially means that plaintiffs have to wait for years before expecting to reach any settlement with the rapper.
Kanye is a former billionaire who has lately found himself in a financial crunch, mostly due to his lavish lifestyle and unpredictable behavior. His company Yeezy now faces an existential crisis after having more than $1 million in unpaid taxes.
