awarded the hefty sum in July<\/a>. According to the ruling, reviewed by The Times, the court found \u201cthe jury\u2019s award to Maria Avila is excessive,\u201d citing \u201cinsufficient evidence\u201d of the \u201cextensive permanent nerve damage\u201d and of \u201cthe value to future pain and suffering\u201d resulting from the 2020 incident. <\/p>\nJudge Huey P. Cotton ruled that Avila can either agree to a reduced award of $9.5 million in damages or undergo a new trial for the damages. She has until Tuesday to decide. Neither legal representatives for Brown nor Avila, also identified in court documents as Maria Soledad Avila Marmolejo, immediately responded on Wednesday to The Times\u2019 request for comment. <\/p>\n
Avila\u2019s sister and co-plaintiff, Patricia Avila sued Brown in April 2021, alleging premises liability, negligent infliction of emotional distress and strict liability. Patricia Avila alleged in her 2021 suit that she and Maria Avila were hired in November 2020 as housekeepers at Brown\u2019s home in Tarzana. <\/p>\n
The suit said the sisters were aware the singer owned dogs at the property and understood he kept the pets locked up in a different part of the home. According to the complaint, the incident occurred in December 2020 when Maria went to the home\u2019s backyard to empty a vacuum. There, she encountered the singer\u2019s Caucasian shepherd, which \u201cproceeded to viciously attack Maria,\u201d the lawsuit said. The complaint alleged the dog attacked Maria around her eye, her left arm and had bitten into her leg.<\/p>\n
After years of litigation and a two-week trial in June in Van Nuys, a civil jury decided Brown owed Maria Avila $12.9 million in damages for counts including emotional distress and medical expenses. At the time Brown was ordered to pay $885,000 in damages to Patricia Avila and $50,000 in damages to Maria\u2019s husband. Brown and his Black Pyramid Co. apparel business, a co-defendant, argued in their motion filed in August that the award to Patricia Avila was \u201cexcessive and unsupported by evidence.\u201d The court found otherwise on Tuesday, according to the ruling, and kept the original award to Patricia Avila. <\/p>\n
At the time of the original verdict, Patricia Avila\u2019s attorney Michael C. Murphy Jr. told The Times in a statement that his team was \u201cthrilled\u201d by the outcome. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are so happy for her and her family after everything they went through on that horrible day,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was an honor to represent her.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some monetary relief may be on the horizon for Chris Brown, found liable earlier this year for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2701,20968,3194,28299,57329,146,285960,85,83494,46,35972,285957,285961,285958,20551,285959,4942,27403],"class_list":["post-632650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-award","tag-chris-brown","tag-court","tag-damage","tag-emotional-distress","tag-entertainment","tag-housekeeper","tag-il","tag-incident","tag-israel","tag-jury","tag-maria-avila","tag-new-trial","tag-patricia-avila","tag-sister","tag-tarzana-home","tag-times","tag-tuesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}