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Megan Thee Stallion at the 2024 MTV VMAs
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Key Takeaways:
- A judge ruled in favor of Megan Thee Stallion, ordering sanctions against blogger Milagro Gramz.
- Gramz deleted thousands of text messages and removed WhatsApp despite being legally required to preserve them.
- The ruling highlights the legal risks of erasing digital evidence in defamation lawsuits.
Megan Thee Stallion scored another small victory in her ongoing defamation lawsuit against Milagro Gramz. On Thursday (Oct. 9), Judge Lisette M. Reid imposed sanctions on the blogger for deleting “thousands of text messages.”
According to the ruling, the defendant — née Milagro Elizabeth Cooper — was under a legal obligation to “retain and preserve paper and electronic communications” related to the case. It also confirmed that Gramz was formally notified of those “retention and preservation duties” by Megan’s legal team the day before the suit was filed.
“Despite this written notice, and these underlying legal duties, Defendant deleted thousands of text messages and removed the WhatsApp app from her phone that potentially contained messages and chats,” legal documents stated. While the “Whenever” rapper will “likely never be able to prove” what those messages contained, the court allowed the jury to assume the information would have been damaging to Gramz’s defense.
In her original filing, Megan alleged that Gramz acted as a “mouthpiece” for Tory Lanez — who is currently serving a 10-year sentence for shooting her in the foot — and collaborated with the Canadian rapper’s father, Sonstar Peterson, to launch a “campaign of harassment” against her.
Judge Reid also ruled that, as a result, Gramz must pay the “reasonable amount of fees and costs incurred to bring the spoliation issue to the court’s attention,” including expenses related to the evidentiary hearing. Both the blogger and Megan’s legal team were ordered to “meet and confer” within five days to determine what those costs will be.
Just a few months earlier, in July, Gramz had already been ordered to pay $5,000 in Megan’s attorney fees to cover the cost of “forcing the disclosure” of the YouTuber’s text messages. She was given 30 days to make the payment.
Especially in the years following the shooting incident involving Lanez, Megan has been frequently targeted online by his supporters. In 2024, the Grammy-winning rapper had had enough and filed a defamation suit against blogger Gramz, who allegedly circulated a deepfake pornographic video of her, among other claims.
