Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, has avoided being served with notice that his legal team dropped him after the rapper became engulfed in controversy, his former attorney wrote to a federal judge on Friday.
Greenberg Traurig (GT) represented Ye in a copyright lawsuit initiated in June, but the firm withdrew as counsel in November, citing the rapper’s repeated antisemitic comments.
The firm on Friday told U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres that it “expended significant” efforts to serve Ye with the withdrawal order without success, asking Torres to allow the firm to instead serve Ye by publishing advertisements in two Los Angeles area newspapers and mailing the document to two of his possible addresses.
The firm asserted that it is impracticable to serve Ye through traditional means, so the alternative methods are a “belt-and-suspenders” effort necessary to serve him, in addition to an extension of the deadline.
“Given GT’s diligent efforts [to] personally serve Ye, good cause exists for the requested extension,” the firm wrote. “GT has dispatched process servers to the addresses it previously knew Ye to frequent, and has exhausted all methods of contacting Ye to arrange for service, including through Ye’s legal representatives and through Ye directly.”
Ye could not be reached for comment.
The suit arose in June, when Ultra International Music Publishing sued Ye for allegedly sampling Marshall Jefferson’s song “Move Your Body” without authorization in his song “Flowers.”
But after Ye faced public backlash for repeatedly making comments with antisemitic tropes, dining with white supremacist Nick Fuentes and praising Adolf Hitler during an appearance on Alex Jones’s Infowars, prominent brands began exiting their deals with the rapper.
After the rapper’s prior management disassociated with him, GT sought to withdraw from the case and told the judge that the firm’s attorneys had been unable to meaningfully communicate with Ye.