I’ve successfully driven the Grove - Mini I2C Motor Driver, and there’s no same issue reported for this, so I can temporarily conclude that your issue isn’t a common one.
Could you share more informations about your research? Have you tried other I2C Groves e.g. Grove - OLED Display 0.96" ?
From the error message
What I get from the message is, the Grove - Mini I2C Motor Driver may be damaged. Have you tried to drive this Grove via an Arduino board? Or grab some board that can do I2C scan, does the Grove - Mini I2C Motor Driver respond to any I2C communications?