Mary J. Blige has won the dismissal of a lawsuit filed against her by a former friend, Misa Hylton.
In April 2025, the celebrity stylist submitted a legal complaint in which she accused the R&B superstar of trying to “coerce” rapper Vado into ending his management agreement with her.
Hylton also alleged that Blige wanted to sign Vado – real name Teyon Winfree – with her company, Beautiful Life Productions, and “sabotaged” her professional relationship with the artist. She sued Blige for breach of contract and sought $5 million (£3.7 million) in damages.
Blige’s lawyers denied the allegations at the time, and in a ruling made in a New York court on Tuesday, Judge Phaedra F. Perry-Bond granted a motion to dismiss the case.
Perry-Bond noted Hylton never responded to Blige’s request to dismiss – which was tantamount to dropping the case.
“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,” the judge wrote, according to Billboard.
Judge Perry-Bond also declined Blige’s request to penalise Hylton for filing the case – but warned that the application could be revived.
“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 update, Hylton’s lawyer, Nicholas Ramcharitar, noted that his client decided to forego the lawsuit as she had allegedly received threats amid Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s sex trafficking trial last year. Hylton and Combs dated in the early ’90s, and welcomed son Justin Combs 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,” he told Billboard.
Representatives for Blige have not yet commented on the dismissal.
