After Kanye West went on a series of antisemitic tirades earlier this year, virtually everyone close to him — save a ragtag group of white nationalists and Elon Musk — cut ties with the singer.
Greenberg Traurig LLP — which represented West in lawsuits over everything from business deals gone bad to allegedly stolen song samples —told Insider in a statement that it condemns "antisemitism and all hate speech or bigotry, which is repugnant to the core values we believe in and live" and that it had "moved to withdraw from our representations" of West in his litigation.
The trouble is, the firm can't find West to tell him they no longer represent him.
In a December 12 letter to a federal judge reviewed by Insider, an attorney for the firm said they couldn't reach him.Lawyers for Greenberg Traurig were able to serve West with documents telling him they no longer wanted to represent him. But the judge, Analisa Torres, said the firm couldn't officially cut loose West, who now goes by Ye, until they could hand him her order allowing them to withdraw.
At that point, West went dark.
"Ye ceased responding to GT's attempts to contact him, and despite diligent efforts and the use of a process server, GT has been unable to locate Ye or serve him," Greenberg Traurig attorney Justin MacLean wrote to Torres.
In a follow-up letter on December 21, MacLean said they still couldn't find West and asked the judge for an extension.
"Despite further diligent efforts and the use of a process server, GT has still been unable to locate Ye or serve him at the addresses that GT previously understood Ye to frequent," MacLean wrote.
West stopped replying to texts from his lawyers
The drama is playing out in an ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit that illustrates how West is floundering without his usual guardrails.
Filed in June, it alleges West stole a sample from the 1986 Marshall Jefferson song "Move Your Body" for his song "Flowers." Sample clearance is a regular part of what any record label does, but West released the song "Flowers" on his album "Donda 2," which he produced independently.
"The unauthorized sample taken by West is repeated at least 22 times throughout 'Flowers,'" the lawsuit alleges.
The lawyers from Greenberg Traurig asked the judge on November 2 if they could withdraw from the lawsuit, not long after Torres, a US district judge in Manhattan, ordered the parties to prepare for a trial.
In her order, which Torres asked Greenberg Traurig to serve to West, Torres originally said West had until January 4 to inform her whether he wants to get a new lawyer or represent himself in the case.