Andra Day and her longtime manager, Jeffrey Evans, are in the midst of an acrimonious split, and they’re going to court over it. Both parties filed lawsuits this week claiming the other owes them a significant amount of money, with Day going so far as to say she was left “facing eviction” and “unable to pay the monthly minimum on her credit-card debt.” In two lawsuits reviewed by The Cut, the singer and actress says Evans has stolen nearly $1.6 million from her. Meanwhile, he claims it’s actually she who owes him money.
On Monday, Evans filed a breach-of-contract suit against Day, who was his client from 2011 until March of this year. In his complaint, Evans claims Day owes him money based on a contract that gives him a 40 percent cut of her publishing royalties and a 20 percent commission on other profits. He also alleges he’s owed a portion of her back-end payments from the Netflix film The Deliverance. In total, Evans claims he’s owed “a minimum of $850,000.”
While mostly dedicated to explaining how Day owes him money, Evans’s complaint does note that in 2023 he acknowledged he had “mistakenly retained $575,486.00 in payments properly due to Ms. Day.”
Day filed a countersuit on Tuesday, calling the original contract that gave Evans a 40 percent cut of her publishing royalties “exploitative” and pointing out that both that contract and the one giving him a 20 percent commission expired in 2023. (She also recalls signing the contract while “unrepresented by legal counsel.”) Additionally, she alleges that, during the years they were working together, Evans had “siphoned” a large amount of money until he was “caught red-handed.” Her accusations include Evans’s misappropriating a $600,000 recording fund from Warner Records and stealing $1 million worth of her music income.
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“What is immediately apparent is that Evans abused his role as a fiduciary to scam Day with blindless greed,” Day’s lawyers wrote. “He siphoned so much money from Day — a quadruple platinum hitmaker and Golden Globe Best Actress winner — that he left her facing eviction, unable to pay the monthly minimum on her credit card debt, and without sufficient funds to tour.” The complaint states that Day was left in “financial ruins” and had more than $300,000 worth of credit-card debt as of summer 2023.
Day claims Evans wove a “web of deceit” that will require an accounting investigation to uncover “the full extent of the contract breaches, fiduciary failures, and civil theft.” As of now, she claims Evans owes her $1.59 million.
“My client categorically denies the frivolous allegations made against him,” an attorney for Evans told The Cut. Day’s attorney declined to comment.
