A California judge signaled Thursday he was on the verge of sharply reducing the $12.9 million in damages that a jury awarded to a housekeeper who was mauled by a massive dog outside Chris Brown’s mansion in 2020. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Huey P. Cotton heard arguments from the housekeeper’s lawyer Thursday but repeatedly indicated he was not persuaded to change his tentative order.
In her address to the court, the lawyer for housekeeper Maria Avila revealed the contents of the unpublished order. The magnitude of the current reduction is almost 40 percent. That’s over $5 million,” Avila’s lawyer, Nancy Doumanian, said.
She pointed to testimony from the surgeon who treated Avila on the night of the attack and continued caring for her through reconstructive procedures on her face and arm. At trial, the surgeon told jurors that Avila had sustained a serious injury to her radial nerve, leaving her with reduced movement in her wrist and fingers and impairing her ability to grip objects, write, type, dress, groom herself, clean, and perform other daily activities, Doumanian said. He also testified that Avila continued to experience neurological deficits in her face, including heightened sensitivity to pain.
But he was clear he wasn’t asking for more argument about whether the overall reduction should be smaller. Avila broke down crying as she recounted for jurors the Dec. 12, 2020 mauling at Brown’s home in the Tarzana neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley. She said the attack left her with severe injuries to her arm and face, extensive scarring, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Speaking softly, Avila said she had gone outside to empty a vacuum bag when the large Caucasian Shepherd, also known as a Central Asian Ovcharka, pounced on her without warning. With her hands visibly shaking, she rolled up her left sleeve and turned her gaze to the wall as jurors examined the raised and pitted skin covering her forearm. She then removed her glasses and lifted her bangs to reveal a pattern of scars running from beneath her left eye up across her forehead.
Testifying in Spanish through an interpreter, Avila described a grueling recovery. She said surgeons harvested skin from her abdomen to graft onto her mangled arm, leaving her in extreme pain and unable to bend at the waist. The lacerations to her face required dozens of stitches.
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