ROUND ROCK, TX - APRIL 30: (L - R) Bahja Rodriguez aka Miss Beauty, Breaunna Womack aka Miss Babydoll, and Zonnique Pullins aka Miss Star of the OMG Girlz pose during their Get Schooled Victory Tour at Stony Point High School on April 30, 2013 in Round Rock, Texas. (Photo by Rick Kern/WireImage)
The judge presiding over T.I. and his wife Tameka “Tiny” Harris‘s lawsuit against a toymaker has been declared a mistrial, after jurors heard a woman testifying she “did not want to support a company that steals from African Americans and their ideas.”
The lawsuit, filed against MGA Entertainment, claims the toy company stole from their daughter’s likeness for their LOL Surprise Dollz toy line, which the woman in question called cultural appropriation.
Zonnique Pullins, T.I.‘s stepdaughter, had previously been a part of the girl rap group OMG Girlz, whose likeness bares a shockingly resemblance to the aforementioned dolls, The Shade Room previously reported.
“I did not want to support a company that steals from African Americans and their ideas,” the woman was overheard saying.
According to court documents obtained by crime reporter Meghann Cuniff, Judge Selna deemed the woman’s testimony regarding cultural appropriation a “rant” that is prejudicial against the defendants, which in this case is MGA Entertainment.
T.I.’s lawyer, Erin Ranahan, tried to get Judge Selna to reconsider, claiming the testimony wasn’t anything helpful for their case.
“We did not want that theme before this jury in particular. This is not Los Angeles. There’s not a single Black person on the jury.”
The rapper and his wife are suing a toymaker for using his stepdaughter’s likeness in a series of dolls, which they claim ripped off her look while working in the rap group OMG Girlz.
In April 2022, Pullins accused the doll company’s LOL Dolls of plagiarizing the aesthetic of OMG Girlz, a group she was in during her teenage years, The Shade Room‘s Nick Fenley wrote for Blavity at the time.
The Harris family were amidst a trial to defend the intellectual property rights of former girl rap group OMG Girlz, Cuniff reports.
In an Instagram post Zonnique made in April, she polled her followers on the matter, having them choose between “Hope you got paid” and “Nope, don’t see (the resemblance).”
Roughly 95 percent of respondents sided with Pullins.
The trial itself is going to be about MGA’s LOL Dolls and whether or not they infringe on OMG Girlz. The doll maker was actually the first to initiate litigation back in 2020, but now T.I. and Tiny have gone on the offensive with a counterclaim.
Cuniff reports the suit has “big cultural misappropriation and racism issues being considered in litigation, among other pre-trial issues,” she tweeted.
It’s unclear as to when a new trial will begin.
