Rapper Lil Uzi Vert has taken legal action against a California rehabilitation center, claiming an employee secretly recorded a private treatment session and the footage later spread across social media. The lawsuit, filed in June 2024, targets Oro House Recovery Centers’ Acadia Malibu facility, employee Lynn Tumpa, and her teenage nephew.
The case centers on allegations that Tumpa recorded a segment of a therapy session without permission while Lil Uzi Vert (born Symere Bysil Woods, who uses they/them pronouns) was receiving treatment at the facility in 2022. According to court documents, the recording allegedly made its way to X (formerly Twitter) in February 2024 and later appeared on Instagram in April 2024.
Lil Uzi Vert’s attorneys claim Tumpa shared the illegal recording with her nephew, who is also named in the lawsuit. While it remains unclear exactly who posted the video online, the rapper’s legal team argues that “Tumpa was the source and disseminated the Video online, either directly or indirectly.”
The rapper entered rehab in February 2022 and spent about seven months working on their sobriety. In a previous interview with 032c magazine, Lil Uzi Vert credited Roc Nation CEO Desiree Perez for helping them get into treatment. “I didn’t want to do it, but I had to – and I can say now that it was a great thing to do,” they said at the time. “The first month and a half were hard, but after that, it was easy, because the people there became my family. They showed me so many different outlets and ways to cope with life.”
Rapper Claims Rehab Center Broke Privacy Laws
The lawsuit includes serious allegations against both the facility and the employee. Lil Uzi Vert’s legal team accuses Oro Recovery of breach of contract and negligent hiring, supervision, and retention. The facility and Tumpa also face charges of violating the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, which generally blocks healthcare providers from sharing a patient’s medical information without permission.
Tumpa faces an additional accusation of breach of fiduciary duty. All three defendants—Tumpa, her nephew, and Oro Recovery—are also accused of intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and invasion of privacy by public disclosure of private facts.
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Court Rejects Request to Force Rapper’s California Deposition
The case recently saw a procedural development favoring the rapper. On June 23, the Los Angeles County Court declined to force Lil Uzi Vert to appear for a deposition in California, as the defendants had requested.
In a June 9 filing, the rapper’s legal team stated they were willing to be deposed in New York, where they live, or through videoconference. The court agreed with this position, noting in their decision: “The court may not order Plaintiff, a non-resident of California, to be deposed within California. Instead, a non-resident party may be compelled to attend a deposition within the United States and within 75 miles of the residence or a business office of a deponent.”
The court also declined to issue monetary sanctions against the rapper, writing that “Plaintiff notices no sanctions and provides no evidence of attorneys’ fees expended on this opposition.”
Lil Uzi Vert’s attorney, David Moreno, told PEOPLE: “The Court reached the right decision here. We look forward to taking this case to trial.”
The rapper is seeking compensatory, punitive, and statutory damages, with the final amount to be determined at trial. The legal battle highlights the intersection of celebrity status and medical privacy rights, as the case continues to move through the court system. No trial date has been set yet, and the allegations remain unproven in court. The rapper’s deposition has not yet taken place.
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