{"id":772898,"date":"2026-07-01T08:11:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T08:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/772898\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T08:11:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T08:11:16","slug":"chris-brown-must-pay-housekeeper-13-million-for-dog-mauling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/772898\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Brown Must Pay Housekeeper $13 Million for Dog Mauling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tChris Brown<\/a> was found liable by a Los Angeles jury on Tuesday for $13 million in the gruesome case of a dog that mauled and disfigured his housekeeper at his home in 2020.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the end of a two-week trial, the verdict went strongly in favor of Maria Avila, who was viciously attacked by Hades, a 200-pound Caucasian shepherd owned by Brown, while emptying trash outside the singer\u2019s Tarzana, California house. <\/p>\n

\n\tBillboard was first to report<\/a> the verdict Tuesday. According to what her attorney, Michael C. Murphy Jr., told the publication, Brown and his company, Black Pyramid LLC, are on the hook to pay $12.9 million to Maria Avila for negligence. That\u2019s not all they owe. Avila\u2019s sister, Patricia Avila, who was also on the job when the mauling took place, was awarded $885,000 for emotional distress, and Maria Avila\u2019s husband, Oscar Olivo, was separately awarded $50,000.<\/p>\n

\n\tMurphy and a rep for Brown did not immediately respond to Variety\u2018s request for comment. Murphy told Billboard, \u201cAfter more than five years of litigating against Chris Brown, we are thrilled that we were able to get justice for our client, Patricia. We are so happy for her and her family after everything they went through on that horrible day. It was an honor to represent her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBrown had claimed that the dog was kept for security purposes and was not his personal pet. Jurors may have been swayed by testimony that indicated that, rather than call 911 himself or attend to Avila, Brown fled the bloody scene and drove around for hours while leaving those duties to employees, saying that he was afraid there would be a \u201cmedia circus\u201d if his voice were heard on the call or if he were around when police arrived.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe singer had admitted some culpability before the trial began, but testified in court that he had warned Avila and her sister about the dogs and told them only to go outside in the presence of security. The two housekeepers denied having such a conversation with Brown, noting language differences would have made such a discussion unlikely.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe verdict in the Van Nuys courtroom arrived four days after Brown began a co-headlining tour with Usher<\/a> that will play in stadiums across the U.S. this summer, including two nights at L.A.\u2019s SoFi Stadium in September.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaria Avila offered tearful recollections of the traumatic incident and her less-than-full recovery on the stand last week, speaking in Spanish with an interpreter. According to an account of her testimony in Rolling Stone<\/a>, Avila was left with severe scarring on her face and left arm, with limited mobility after surgeons grafted skin from her abdomen to repair her arm. She has not been able to return to work as a housekeeper, it was stated in testimony, because of lacking the arm strength to carry out the job, as well as post-traumatic stress that keeps her from being able to be around dogs kept by clients as pets. Rolling Stone reported that she walked to the jury box to show \u201ca pattern of scars running from beneath her left eye up across her forehead\u201d as well as the \u201craised and pitted skin\u201d on her forearm.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe\u2019s not the same,\u201d Avila\u2019s daughter, Yoseline Espinozashe, testified about her mother, per Rolling Stone. \u201cShe used to have a spark in her. She always dressed up, had her makeup done, her hair done, everything. Now she doesn\u2019t take the time to do that.. Her personality has changed\u2026 She doesn\u2019t like going out anymore. She doesn\u2019t even like to be in public settings. She doesn\u2019t like pictures. She doesn\u2019t like family outings. She doesn\u2019t want people to see her face.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBrown testified that he had been about to shower when he heard the dog growling and rushed down to find Avila lying motionless amid \u201ca lot of blood\u201d from the attack. \u201cThe blood kind of freaked me out,\u201d he said, recalling the sight when Avila was able to roll over. \u201cI\u2019m in shock,\u201d he said, according to Rolling Stone, explaining why he followed his manager\u2019s advice to leave the scene before first responders arrived.<\/p>\n

\n\tPrior to the trial beginning, the judge agreed that questions about Brown\u2019s felony conviction for his 2009 assault on then-girlfriend Rihanna would be barred from testimony.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Van Nuys trial was not Brown\u2019s only recent experience in a courtroom. In London, he is scheduled to face trial in October for an alleged \u201cunprovoked attack\u201d on music producer Abraham Diaw with a bottle in a nightclub in 2003. He briefly appeared in court in the U.K. in January along with his co-defendant in that case, Omololu Akinlolu. They both were granted bail, allowing Brown to go on with his stadium tour this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Brown was found liable by a Los Angeles jury on Tuesday for $13 million in the gruesome…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":772899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,50411,75,31909],"class_list":["post-772898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chris-brown","tag-entertainment","tag-usher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/772899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}