Kanye West hit with lawsuit over alleged phone-throwing incident

Kanye West has been hit with a lawsuit by a photographer over an alleged phone-throwing incident.

Nichol Lechmanik is suing the rapper after he allegedly grabbed her phone and threw it onto the street while she filmed him outside a sports academy in Newbury Park, California on 27 January.

According to the complaint filed in Ventura County Superior Court on Wednesday, Lechmanik claimed that while she was in her car filming the rapper’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian, she noticed him “angrily confronting” another photographer on the street.

“Given defendant Ye’s reputation for violence against photographers, his history of physically harming them, and based on his threatening body language, Plaintiff became fearful for the photographer’s safety,” the complaint reads, reports Billboard.

Lechmanik began to film the incident on her phone from inside her car with the window open. The 45-year-old allegedly went up to her car and “aggressively” said, “You all ain’t gonna run up on me like that.” When she denied doing anything, he allegedly became “enraged” and “grabbed her phone out of her hands” before throwing it “onto the street towards oncoming traffic”.

According to the lawsuit, the photographer stated that the incident caused her “great mental, and emotional pain and suffering” and that she “anticipates incurring medical and related expenses”.

Lechmanik is suing Kanye, also known as Ye, for assault, battery, negligence, and interference with the exercise of her civil rights over the alleged incident.

She is requesting general and special damages, punitive and exemplary damages, civil penalties and costs of the suit.

She has additionally requested an order enjoining Kanye and “all persons acting in concert with him or acting on his behalf, from touching, striking, annoying, contacting, molesting, attacking, threatening, or otherwise interfering with…the plaintiff, and all persons similarly situated, to pursue the occupation of photographer.”

Kanye has a long history of troubles with paparazzi. In 2008, he was arrested for breaking the flash of a photographer’s camera.