2024-09-25 05:55:02
T.I. and his wife Tameka “Tiny” Harris won a stunning $71 million jury verdict Monday in their lawsuit claiming that toymaker MGA stole the design of a line of “O.M.G.” toy dolls from their real-life teen pop group OMG Girlz.
As first reported by Law360, jurors awarded the couple and their companies the huge award after finding that MGA’s dolls infringed both the trade dress and the likeness rights of the OMG Girlz — a defunct musical trio created by Tiny and featuring her daughter Zonnique “Star” Pullins.
Following a three-week trial and a day of deliberations, the jurors awarded the rapper and his wife $17.9 million in actual damages and another $53.6 million in punitive damages. A spokesperson for MGA did not immediately return a request for comment.
In a statement to Billboard, T.I. and Tiny’s lead attorney John Keville, of the law firm Sheppard Mullin, praised the “remarkable jury” for “holding MGA fully accountable.”
“T.I. and Tiny did what any parent would have done — used their resources to stand up for their kids,” Keville said. “They fought a billion-dollar corporate bully with grace, perseverance, and a determination to stand up for themselves and other creatives.”
The legal battle began in 2021, with T.I. (real name Clifford Harris) and Tiny claiming that MGA had committed both “cultural appropriation and outright theft of the intellectual property” by stealing the look of a group of “young multicultural women.”
Their complaint against MGA included side-by-side images, aiming to show how each OMG doll was directly based on a particular member of the OMG Girlz – Pullins, Bahja “Beauty” Rodriguez, and Breaunna “Babydoll” Womack.
MGA maintained that it had done nothing wrong — that the dolls were more often branded as L.O.L. Surprise! O.M.G., and that consumers would not confuse the toys for the “short-lived” band.
Over three years of litigation, the case already went to trial twice. The first trial, in January 2023, ended in a mistrial after jurors heard inadmissible testimony featuring accusations of racism against MGA. The second trial then ended in a verdict for MGA, with jurors clearing the company of wrongdoing. But that verdict was later overturned on appeal, setting the stage for yet another trial.
On the third try, the outcome swung in favor of T.I. and Tiny. In a livestream on Instagram following the verdict, she said it had been “a hell of a fight” but that “we couldn’t be more happy.”
“We wanted to thank the jurors for just seeing us through this, and just believing in what we said,” she said in the video. “They heard our story and they knew we wasn’t lying. It’s amazing.”
In their own statement to Billboard, the members of the OMG Girlz also celebrated the verdict: “It has taken us over four years to get vindication for MGA’s unlawful appropriation of our trade dress and likeness,” they said. “We hope this case makes companies think twice about taking an artist’s intellectual property without their permission.”
MGA can still appeal the verdict and the damages award, first by asking the judge to set them aside and then by taking the case to a federal appeals court.
