Adidas has emerged victorious in its legal battle with investors over Kanye West‘s antisemitic comments and other inappapriate behavior during their Yeezy partnership.
In court documents review by HipHopDX, a judge sided with the sports giant and dismissed the lawsuit filed against them, which accused the company of failing to protect investors by ignoring the potential damage caused by Ye.
Judge Karin J. Immergut ruled that HRSA-ILA Funds’ complaint contained insufficient evidence and failed to prove that Adidas had misled investors regarding its lucrative yet volatile partnership with West, which ended in October 2022 following a string of antisemitic and other racially offensive statements from the rapper.
“Certainly, that [Kanye] allegedly engaged in such behavior while working with Adidas is troubling,” said Judge Karin J. Immergut. “This Court does not condone what [West] allegedly did. But the question before this Court is not whether to admonish [him] or hold Adidas accountable for [his] conduct.”
“This Court is faced with a precise legal question: has [HRSA-ILA Funds] sufficiently pleaded facts showing that Adidas misled investors and thereby committed federal securities fraud? On the current record before this Court, the answer is no,” she concluded.
Filed in an Oregon court last year, the lawsuit accused Adidas of failing to “publicly disclose offensive and inappropriate acts committed between 2013 and 2018” by Kanye West, as well as the company’s internal concerns about his behavior.
As a result, investors claimed the German company “misled investors and committed federal securities fraud.”
Adidas later filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing it was not required to publicly reveal Kanye’s misconduct and that its risk disclosures were sufficient.
The motion highlighted the fact that the company’s contracts generally contain clauses allowing it terminate partnerships over improper or unethical conduct, which Adidas ultimately invoked to cut ties with Kanye.
The sportswear brand also denied misleading investors, saying: “Nothing in Adidas’s risk disclosures states, or even implies, that Ye or any other partner had never engaged in any inappropriate or problematic conduct.
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“Accordingly, those disclosures are not misleading merely because they do not specifically describe each instance of Ye’s past misconduct, as plaintiff suggests.”
While many of Kanye’s antisemitic comments were made publicly, such as on social media or in interviews, a 2023 exposé published by The New York Times detailed his long history of alleged misconduct while working with Adidas.
Citing interviews with current and former employees, as well as hundreds of previously undisclosed internal records, the article claims Ye “made Adidas executives watch pornography during a meeting,” “advised a Jewish Adidas manager to kiss a picture of Hitler every day” and directed “angry, sexually crude comments” at staff members, among other acts.
“Adidas’ leaders, eager for the profits, time and again abided his misconduct,” it added.
