A judge has ruled that Muni Long’s former managers cannot subpoena her medical records, giving the R&B singer a win in a lawsuit where both sides have accused the other of wrongdoing. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn issued the order Thursday, Oct. 8, finding that the records are privileged and off limits.
The evidentiary decision comes in a bitter legal fight between the Grammy winner, whose real name is Priscilla Renea Hamilton, and her former managers Chaka Zulu and Jeff Dixon, along with their company Ebony Son Entertainment. The two sides have traded insults and allegations of legal misconduct.
Zulu and Dixon say Long defamed them when she publicly accused them of forcing her into a mental health facility against her will. They asked the court to order the facility to turn over her medical records so they could prove her statement was false.
In the order, which Billboard obtained, Netburn wrote that those records are clearly privileged and cannot be discovered, whether they come from the facility or from Long. The judge said the managers may seek information that is not medical, but they cannot obtain records or details about her care.
“Plaintiff may ask Hamilton about the circumstances of her admission to the clinic but may not seek discovery of her medical records and treatment,” Netburn wrote.
Zulu and Dixon, veteran music managers best known for their long partnership with Ludacris, sued Long in October 2025. They claim she refused to pay more than $600,000 in commissions after she fired them. In their filing, they called her a “serial grifter” who had “shamelessly reneged” on promises to pay.
After the case was filed, Long’s representatives said in a media statement that Zulu and Dixon had at some point taken her phone and “sought to have her involuntarily committed to a mental health facility,” when she actually needed treatment for a Lupus flare up. Long then countersued in January, saying she had “experienced excruciating pain and mental anguish” from being “forced” to remain at the Cleveland Clinic Indian River Behavioral Health Center in March 2024. She later dropped that accusation from the litigation.
Last month, Zulu and Dixon added a defamation claim, arguing that the public allegations about involuntary commitment were “outlandish” and false. “That statement is a blatant lie designed to disparage plaintiff’s reputation in the music industry,” they said.
To support that claim, their attorneys sought access to “essentially all documents related to Hamilton’s treatment” at the Cleveland Clinic, including her “diagnosis, evaluation, and treatment.” They argued that she had waived those protections even though such records are normally protected by medical privilege.
Netburn, however, noted that Long had withdrawn those claims. “Hamilton’s initial counterclaim … put her mental health at issue and, thus, would have waived her privilege,” the judge wrote. “But Hamilton never released her records before she withdrew the counterclaim, and therefore her privilege was reinstated.”
Lawyers for Zulu and Dixon argued that the medical records were “the best (and likely the only) contemporaneous evidence” to help prove they did not involuntarily commit their client. The judge said that was not enough to override a crucial safeguard such as medical privilege.
“This is true even if, as Ebony Son contends, her medical records are ‘the best’ evidence to prove the falsity of Hamilton’s statements,” Netburn wrote. “Indeed, the nature of evidentiary privileges is that they will sometimes block a party from relevant discovery.”
Attorneys for both sides and representatives for Long did not immediately return a request for comment.
The case remains at its earliest stages after the Thursday ruling. In addition to defamation, Zulu and Dixon accuse Long of breach of contract, unjust enrichment and other wrongdoing over her alleged failure to pay. Long, in turn, accuses the pair of breaching their fiduciary duty to a client through alleged failures in their managerial roles.
With the medical records off limits, the dispute remains focused on dueling claims over money, representation and reputation. The case is still in its early stages.
