Atlanta hip-hop mogul T.I. testified Friday that he never expected to be in a federal courtroom, still battling billionaire toymaker Isaac Larian nearly four years after his wife first sent a cease-and-desist letter claiming Larian’s line of “L.O.L. Surprise! O.M.G.” dolls infringed on the name, image, and likeness of the couple’s teen pop trio, the OMG Girlz.
The musician, born Clifford Harris, 43, said he had never sued anyone before this $25 million legal war and thought the sides would have reached “a resolution of sorts” by now.
“I don’t believe for one second that Mr. Larian would allow anybody to disrespect the image and likeness of his daughter, so why does he think that I will?” T.I. asked rhetorically, referring to his stepdaughter Zonnique “Star” Pullins, a founding member of the OMG Girlz band. The group once included Lil Wayne’s daughter Reginae Carter, but quickly evolved to the three core members who eventually signed with Interscope Records: Pullins, Bahja “Beauty” Rodriguez, and Breaunna “Babydoll” Womack.
T.I. told the jury that in his opinion, Larian’s company, MGA Entertainment, marketed seven dolls that were “undeniably blatant” in their infringement of the OMG Girlz’s name and trade dress. “You can hold them up to these pictures and see. Anyone with eyes can see that this picture influenced this doll,” he testified Friday in a courtroom in Santa Ana, California. T.I. said his camp had narrowed the number of allegedly infringing dolls from 32 down to a specific seven to focus on the “most undeniable” alleged theft and not “nitpick.”
One of the seven dolls, named Chillax, sports a black and white two-piece ensemble that Tiny has called a “rip-off” of the costumes the OMG Girlz wore on their All Around the World Tour in 2013. Another doll has distinctive long straight hair that’s parted down the middle with one side bright pink and the other dark black. The hairstyle matches Rodriguez’s look in the first photo posted on the group’s Instagram account, the plaintiffs claim.
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Sitting on the witness stand, T.I. recalled how his wife, Tameka “Tiny” Harris, formed the girl group in 2009 to help launch Pullins’ professional singing career. T.I. said he wasn’t very involved in the management but had an ownership stake and even wrote some raps for the group. He said it was a surprise when MGA responded to Tiny’s cease-and-desist letter with a preemptive lawsuit seeking a court declaration MGA did nothing wrong.
The musician, real estate developer, actor, and director — a pioneer of trap music who later gained mainstream fame with chart-topping hits including “Live Your Life” with Rihanna (2008) and “Blurred Lines” with Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams (2013) — denied MGA’s claim that he filed the lawsuit as a “money grab.” He said he was already rich and “blessed.”
“I don’t have to go out and scam and try to manipulate the truth to receive money. I have my own talent, I build my own brands. I run my own companies,” he testified Friday. “I find my time is more valuable than what I can receive from a lawsuit. I’d rather be focusing my time, my energy, and my efforts on doing creative things and build brands. I have better stuff to do than be in a courtroom.”
T.I. testified that he actually was “touched” by Larian’s story about creating his popular line of Bratz dolls because his daughter said she wanted a doll who looked like her. (Larian is of Iranian descent.) But T.I. complained about how he was treated during an eight-hour deposition, claiming he was subjected to a racist comment.
“The deposition as I recall started with a bit of condescension. Almost, how dare I even have the gall to present a claim against MGA. But specifically, I remember them asking me something about eating fried chicken and waffles, or shrimp and grit. Something very, you know — it rubbed me the wrong way. So, I probably, I took a tone,” T.I. said. His answer was aimed at defusing a deposition clip shown by MGA’s lawyer during opening statements. The clip showed T.I. singing “I don’t know” repetitively as a response. The lawyer suggested T.I. wasn’t concerned with the “details” and “facts” of the high-profile case. T.I. testified Friday that he responds to frustration with “humor.”
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“I’ve been doing that since school, responding with humor rather than hostility. I feel like it’s easier for me to get my point across with humor than it is to be hostile. I have the perspective that if you aint laughing at life, you’re missing the point,” he said.
T.I. said he believed MGA’s lawyer, Paul J. Loh, tried to cast the OMG Girlz as financial flops during his opening statement to convince the jurors the group wasn’t worth copying. T.I. said Pullins was a teenager making more than $30,000 a year during the OMG Girlz’s heyday. He called that respectable considering the group had to pay all their own expenses before paying themselves.
“In my opinion, I think that MGA is trying to represent the OMG Girlz as being unsuccessful as to say, ‘They’re so small, why would we want to take it from them?’ But what makes sense to me is, if I want to get away with taking something from someone, I wouldn’t take it from someone that was already known by everyone. I’d take something from someone that I felt no one would notice and probably wouldn’t have a leg to stand on to sue me in court. That’s what plagiarism is,” he said.
T.I. suggested that after Larian requested his team incorporate the OMG acronym into a product, one of his employees likely “googled” the acronym and discovered the OMG Girlz. “The Girlz pop up, they bring [the look] back to him without showing where they got it from, and here he is now in a lawsuit, not knowing that the designs came from them googling the girls. It could be a tough spot to be in. I understand that. But here we are,” Harris testified over an objection from MGA’s lawyer that was shot down by the judge.
In her own turn on the witness stand Wednesday, Tiny said she felt “wholeheartedly” that several MGA dolls were a “rip” of the group she created in 2009. She said the trio made a splash with their signature pink, purple, and blue hair and “vibrant” costumes, and that plenty of OMG Girlz fans believed MGA’s line of “L.O.L. Surprise! O.M.G.” dolls were an affiliated product. Like her husband, Tiny denied staging a shakedown.
“I’m not here for a money grab. I live very comfortably, me and my husband. We’re doing pretty well for ourselves,” Tiny, a member of the Nineties group Xscape and co-writer of TLC hit “No Scrubs,” previously testified. “It’s more about the girls. I feel like the girls built a brand, and they work hard for it.”
The current trial marks the couple’s third attempt to convince jurors they’re the victims of infringement. An initial trial in January 2023 ended in a mistrial while a second trial ended in a loss for the couple that was overturned last year due to a change in the law.
While the new trial is largely a replay of last year’s proceeding, it differs in the number of disputed dolls, the amount of money being sought — $25 million down from nearly $100 million — and some of the evidence allowed to reach jurors. In a key ruling in August, U.S. District Court Judge James Selna said MGA designer and star witness Lora Stephens would be barred from repeating much of the “unflattering” testimony about T.I. that she gave during the second trial. In that testimony delivered in May 2023, Stephens said she never would have copied the OMG Girlz’s look because of “negative associations” with the Harris family, in particular the so-called “virginity test” that T.I. admittedly once sought for his teen daughter Deyjah.
“On reflection, the court narrows the scope of Stephen’s testimony to exclude the specifics of the negative conduct,” Judge Selna ruled last month. He said Stephens would not be allowed to describe her personal reaction to an episode of the couple’s VH1 reality show, T.I. & Tiny: Friends & Family Hustle, that centered on the family strife that ensued after T.I. revealed on a 2019 podcast that he accompanied Deyjah to the gynecologist so he could confirm her hymen was still intact.
In her 2019 testimony, Stephens said she “happened to catch” the episode on TV and found the plot line “disturbing” and “demeaning.” “I felt that it was, you know, just sexually abusive to actually exploit it that way,” she testified. “I felt that it just was the opposite of empowering young women.” Stephens also said also said she was aware of other “negative information” at the time she designed three of the dolls accused of infringement. She mentioned allegations of “sex trafficking, drugs, and raping employees and other women from different cities.” She said she learned about the allegations from The Shade Room and two major radio stations in Los Angeles.
“The court has the benefit of the passage of time to put this testimony in the context of the full trial and the benefit of actually having heard the testimony delivered. With these consideration in mind, the court will only allow Stephens to testify generally that the conduct was negative, and she may characterize it as the antithesis of family values, morally repugnant, or like terms which are first ruled on by the Court. Strong generic descriptors are sufficient to carry Stephens’ message,” Judge Selna ruled. “The details of the conduct are far more prejudicial than the probative value which is generically redundant. The balance tips substantially in favor of exclusion. The general concept is sufficient.”
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Judge Selna previously ruled that T.I.’s criminal record would be off limits at trial. The musician’s legal woes are well known to many fans and have involved allegations against Tiny as well.
As Rolling Stone previously reported, multiple women have accused the Harrises of sexual misconduct — allegations the couple denies. One accuser, an Air Force veteran, alleges in a pending lawsuit that T.I. and Tiny sexually assaulted her in a hotel room in 2005. The Los Angeles County District Attorney considered her claims but declined to file any charges, saying the alleged incident was outside the 10-year statute of limitations. “Without the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence being evaluated, the case is declined due to expiration of the statute of limitations,” the DA worksheet dated Sept. 14, 2021, and obtained by Rolling Stone reads.
