Deposition testimony about racism leads to mistrial in rapper T.I.'s lawsuit over OMG Dolls
I've got the details on two mistrials in five days at the federal courthouse in Santa Ana.
The federal civil trial pitting toymaker MGA Entertainment against rapper T.I. ended with a mistrial on Wednesday, and the aftermath has been ugly.
As I explain in my Los Angeles Magazine article, Judge James V. Selna stripped allegations of racism and cultural misappropriation from the case, which is about whether MGA’s line of LOL Surprise OMG Dolls infringe the likeness and trade dress of the OMG Girlz music group.
Attorneys were warned before trial to stay away from the topics, but video deposition excerpts played on Tuesday afternoon included comments about stealing from African Americans and the Black community. MGA’s lawyers Jennifer Keller and Chase Scolnick asked for a mistrial because of it, and Selna granted one Wednesday morning. (Check out my Twitter thread from court here.)
The judge said instructing the jury to disregard the testimony “would only emphasize the nature of the inflammatory material and would not be effective.”
“The violation here wasn’t with respect to a garden variety” issue, Selna said. “It was with respect to what I find the most inflammatory issue in this case.”
The judge partly blamed himself for the deposition testimony being played. Attorneys presented the designations and objections to him Tuesday morning, with MGA’s lawyers objecting to some excerpts T.I.’s lawyers indicated what they wanted to play for jurors, including the parts about MGA stealing from African-Americans.
The objections were based on erroneous arguments that didn’t correctly specify Selna’s prior rulings, and it was all presented to the judge Tuesday morning with other depositions to sort through, and he had to do so from the bench during trial. Still, the judge said, “The court errored when failing to pick up the cultural misappropriation in those passages.”
What a mess.
Then it all got even messier when T.I.’s lawyer Erin Ranahan, a partner at Winston Strawn LLP, filed opposition to MGA’s written motion for mistrial that laid bare Keller’s use of the n-word in cross-examination of T.I.’s stepdaughter Zonnique Pullins but did not mention that it was all within the context of quoting Pullins’ own song lyrics.
Scolnick filed a reply on Thursday that called the statements about Keller’s cross “grossly inappropriate, false, and inflammatory." It says Ranahan’s “tactics betray her true goal” which is “to win by stoking the fires of racial division and make this case about Black v. White.”
The filing goes on to say that Keller “had to quote Ms. Pullins’ own horribly profane lyrics, which include her frequent use of the ‘n’ word and various other expletives.”
While this is not specifically addressed in Ranahan’s filing, the issue of a white person saying the full n-word even when quoting song lyrics in a court of law is a controversial one. This is a civil case in which the n-word with an a on the end was said in full during questioning by an attorney. (Ranahan says Keller went on to use a hard “er,” which I don’t remember hearing and the transcript does not show, but Scolnick’s reply doesn’t dispute it.)
It makes me think back to rapper Tory Lanez’s criminal assault trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court last month for the shooting of Megan Thee Stallion, and the testimony of Sean Kelly.
Kelly is a Hollywood Hills homeowner who saw the July 12, 2020, altercation from his balcony. He testified that he heard Lanez unleash a “torrent of abuse,” so Deputy District Attorney Alexander Bott followed standard trial procedure and asked Kelly what specifically he heard Lanez say. “There’s no censorship in the courtroom,” Bott told Kelly.
Kelly’s answer? “It was all n-words.”
Kelly did not say the full n-word word, ever. And this is in a criminal trial in which he was a key witness answering a question from a prosecutor who’d told him there’s no censorship in the courtroom.
Meanwhile, the use of the n-word in hip-hop songs is regularly explored in academia. I spoke with a professor who touched on what Ranahan wrote in her opposition to the mistrial: “The black community has changed the narrative surrounding the word from one that evoked disgust and disdain to now a meaning that evokes friendship and commonality.”
Timothy Welbeck, a professor and the director of Temple University’s Center for Anti-Racism, told me in a phone interview that he devotes an entire class day in his course “No City for Young Men: Hip Hop and the Narrative of Young Men” to the use of the n-word in song lyrics.
“This conversation is not new among Black people. … Hip-hop has taken what was once an insular conversation and broadcast it to the world,” Welbeck told me. “Because of hip-hop’s wide reach, you have people outside the group who are exposed to contextualized group conversations.”
Welbeck didn’t fault Keller for questioning Pullins about her song lyrics, but he said he believes Keller made a mistake when she said the full n-word.
“As a lawyer, I believe she’s doing her job by trying to use the shock value of that word’s polarizing nature to lay upon the argument that the opposing side is lacking (moral standards). In that regard, she’s lawyer being a lawyer because she’s using a sensational element of the facts to try to draw attention that’s favorable to her side,” Welbeck said. “But in the process, though, I think she made an error in using the word in that way. I think there are other ways she could have communicated her point without using that word.”
Welbeck cautioned, “On the one hand, there is not a universal monolithic agreement among all Black people about the proper usage of the word.” The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People condemns it, and Welbeck said some strongly believe it will never have any redeeming value. Yet others “struggle to end a sentence without using it.”
But for Black people, Welbeck concluded, “Within the concept of group politics, you can use the term appropriately. In many ways, it’s a familial conversation.”
“Black people who use the word as a term of endearment are saying ‘We have a kinship that’s born in our collective history of our people suffering, so we can use a word that once was used to demean us’” in the context of that connection, Welbeck said.
A footnote in Scolnick’s reply to Ranahan’s opposition essentially says Ranahan’s opposition is her admitting Pullins’ lyrics are “racist and offensive.” Scolnick also takes issue with Ranahan’s description of Keller flipping her middle finger to Pullins on the stand from the lectern, saying Keller did so only to demonstrate Pullins’ gesture because the photo she was questioning her about was not in evidence.
“Beyond being false, Ms. Ranahan’s accusations are morally bankrupt,” Scolnick wrote.
Ranahan’s partner David Scheper filed a sur-reply that referenced comments from a juror after the mistrial in which he condoned Keller’s focus on rap lyrics and told her, “Now, I’m not into rap at all, but you were sort of attacking the language, and that to me was sort of appealing to racist-type feelings. Like ‘Let's think less of these people because that's the way they talk. I felt that had nothing to do with the case.”
“Notwithstanding any filings by counsel, the jurors and the media that were present in the courtroom picked up on this conduct on their own,” Scheper wrote.
The juror expanded on his comments in a conversation with YouTuber Nique at Nite, whom I met covering the Tory Lanez trial and was happy to show around the OC federal courthouse for MGA v. T.I. Her full interview is here. I also am venturing into the world of YouTube commentary and did a couple videos on the case you can view here and here.
The attorneys are supposed to reconvene before Judge Selna to decide on another trial date. Stay tuned.
Wanting to say hi to judge, Bratz billionaire Isaac Larian accidentally causes terrorism mistrial
The mistrial in the OMG Dolls v. OMG Girlz case was the second mistrial in five days that MGA Entertainment CEO Isaac Larian was involved in on the 10th floor of the Ronald Reagan Federal Building & Courthouse in Santa Ana.
As my new article for Los Angeles Magazine explains, the first occurred Friday when Larian walked into U.S. District Judge David O. Carter’s courtroom hoping to say hello.
Carter presided over the 2011 Barbie v. Bratz showdown that’s such a big deal my friend who’s a lawyer in Seattle wrote a paper about it in law school, and he and Larian are kind of kindred spirits in that both have reputations as eccentric go getters.
Judge James Selna’s courtroom is down the hall from Carter’s, so Larian stepped in after Selna called a break in the OMG Girlz trial.
The problem was, Carter was taking testimony that was supposed to be closed to the public for viewing.
Read my article to find out how it all went down.
Here’s Larian leaving court after the mistrial Wednesday in his own case.
Thank you for reading the third edition of Legal Affairs and Trials with Meghann Cuniff. I started this as a way to share a roundup of my work every week as I expand my legal affairs reporting and trial coverage. Sign up for free and you will have a collection of my latest Los Angeles Magazine articles, photography, videos, Twitter threads and exclusive insights sent to your email inbox every week. I will be back next Friday. Meanwhile, follow me on Twitter.
This is an interesting approach towards expanding your coverage. Looking forward to seeing how you keep building this out. Thanks for the perspective.
Damn! It’s getting messy