A Santa Ana federal jury took about three hours to return zero punitive damages against MGA Entertainment after a $90 million to $125 million ask. Judge James V. Selna had already struck the last jury's $53.6 million punitive award as unsupported. The only number still standing after four trials is $17.8 million, and both sides just told the press what they think of it.
On July 1, 2026, a federal jury in Santa Ana took about three hours to decide that MGA Entertainment owed Clifford "T.I." Harris and Tameka "Tiny" Harris nothing in punitive damages. The verdict came in the four-trial fight over whether MGA's L.O.L. Surprise! O.M.G. dolls copied the trade dress and likeness of the OMG Girlz, the pop group Tiny Harris co-founded, tried before Senior U.S. District Judge James V. Selna in the Central District of California. "Did they lie about the design process while they were doing it, or tried to deceive somebody? Absolutely not," MGA trial counsel Chad Hummel asked the jury in closing, per Legal Affairs and Trials coverage of the verdict. The Harris side had asked for $90 million to $125 million. The answer was zero, and the $17.8 million in compensatory damages left standing is the number MGA's lawyers now say they will take to the Ninth Circuit.
The zero closes the punitive chapter of a case that has consumed four juries since January 2023. The first trial ended in a mistrial. A second jury cleared MGA months later, before that verdict was set aside, per Rolling Stone's account of the case history. In September 2024, a third jury found that MGA misappropriated the group's name, likeness, and identity through seven dolls in the line, whose members are Zonnique "Star" Pullins, Bahja "Beauty" Rodriguez, and Breaunna "Babydoll" Womack, and infringed its trade dress. That jury awarded $17.8 million in compensatory damages and stacked $53.6 million in punitives on top. The punitive number did not survive contact with Judge Selna.
Selna struck the $53.6 million award, calling it "unsupported by the evidence," per Rolling Stone. The strike reset punitive damages to a clean retrial. Same liability findings. New jury. One question: did MGA act with malice? The retrial opened June 23 and ran just over a week. Bloomberg Law reported the outcome in one line: the jury rejected punitive damages in the doll dispute. Jurors found MGA had not acted with malice, per Rolling Stone. Without that finding, the punitive claim had nothing to stand on, no matter the size of the ask.
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The actor whose position changed is the Harris legal team, which walked in seeking as much as $125 million and walked out defending its own record. "We proved malice once and believe that had this jury had the benefit of the three weeks of evidence the last jury saw, they too would have found punitives appropriate," the team said in a statement reported by Rolling Stone. T.I. spoke outside the courthouse in the register of a man who has been here before: "We live to fight another day. God is still good. Blessings still in abundance." Hummel, for MGA, argued the standing $17.8 million was "punishment enough," per Legal Affairs and Trials. Two juries have now looked at the punitive question. Neither number survived.
The contrast that gives this verdict its charge sits one county line to the north. Lex Machina's 2026 Law Firms Activity Report counted $2.4 billion in plaintiff jury verdicts in Los Angeles Superior Court alone from 2023 through 2025, including a $950 million punitive award in Moore v. Johnson & Johnson. Roughly forty miles south, drawing on the same state's jury pool, a federal courtroom heard a nine-figure punitive ask and returned a zero in three hours, after the judge had already struck the last punitive award in the same case to nothing. Same state. Same era of verdicts. Different forum, and a judge who treated the punitive record as something to be proved, not performed. Anchoring, the tactic last seen in Sentinel's Ector County file, where a $5 million ask ended in a $49 million trucking verdict, now faces a federal record where the anchor bought nothing at all.
The next fight is already framed. MGA's lawyers say they will appeal the $17.8 million compensatory award, per Legal Affairs and Trials, and a notice of appeal is the next docket step. The Harris team's statement about the three weeks of evidence this jury never saw reads like the opening line of its own appellate brief. Each side now holds a fork. MGA can press the appeal and put the last standing dollar figure at risk of growing legal fees and interest, or negotiate against a number a jury refused to enlarge. The Harris side can defend $17.8 million at the Ninth Circuit or attack the retrial's evidentiary limits and chase malice a third time.
Four trials produced this scoreboard. One mistrial. One defense verdict set aside. One $53.6 million punitive award struck by the court. One zero, returned in three hours. The only number that has held through all of it is $17.8 million, and both sides just told the press what they think of it. The ask was $125 million. What stands is $17.8 million. The fight over that starts with the first notice filed, and one side has said it will file. The zero holds. For now.
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