Mary J. Blige has secured the dismissal of a lawsuit brought against her by former friend and celebrity stylist, Misa Hylton.
The legal action was filed in April 2025, when Hylton accused the R&B icon of attempting to “coerce” rapper Vado into terminating his management agreement with her. In the suit, Hylton further alleged that Blige sought to sign Vado, whose real name is Teyon Winfree, to her company, Beautiful Life Productions, and deliberately “sabotaged” her professional relationship with the artist.
Hylton sued Blige for breach of contract and demanded $5 million (£3.7 million) in damages. Blige’s legal team denied the claims at the time.
On Tuesday, a New York court ruled in Blige’s favour, with Judge Phaedra F. Perry-Bond granting a motion to dismiss the case. In her ruling, the judge observed that Hylton failed to respond to Blige’s request for dismissal, a move the court interpreted as effectively abandoning the lawsuit.
“The court in no way condones parties filing lawsuits claiming millions in damages based on inflammatory accusations, only to have those very same parties abandon their allegations when faced with a motion to dismiss and sanctions,” Judge Perry-Bond wrote, according to Billboard.
While the judge declined Blige’s request to sanction Hylton for bringing the case, she issued a stern warning that such action could be reconsidered in the future.
“Plaintiffs and their counsel shall consider this a warning to refrain from engaging in similar patterns of behavior in the future,” she added. “This written warning may serve as weighty evidence on a future application for sanctions if plaintiffs and/or their counsel continue to engage in similar bad faith litigation tactics.”
Following the dismissal, Hylton’s lawyer, Nicholas Ramcharitar, explained that his client chose not to proceed with the case after allegedly receiving threats during Sean “Diddy” Combs’s sex trafficking trial last year. Hylton previously dated Combs in the early 1990s, and they share a son, Justin Combs, born in 1993.
“We do not at any point take lightly the filing of any matter, especially with the claims set forth in this prior suit,” Ramcharitar told Billboard.
As of the time of this report, representatives for Mary J. Blige have not commented on the court’s decision.
