Chris Brown Must Pay Housekeeper $13 Million Over Dog-Mauling Attack
Chris Brown must pay $13 million in damages to the housekeeper who was mauled by a massive security dog on his property in December 2020, a California jury decided Tuesday.
Billboard was first to report the news. Brown and his company Black Pyramid LLC must pay $12.9 million in damages to the housekeeper, Maria Avila, for negligence, according to Michael C. Murphy Jr., a lawyer representing her sister, Patricia Avila. Patricia, who was working with Maria when the attack happened, was awarded $885,000 for emotional distress. Maria’s husband Oscar Olivo — who claimed his wife’s injuries affected their marriage, depriving him of the intimacy they had before — was separately awarded $50,000.
Maria Avila gave emotional testimony at the two-week trial, breaking down on the witness stand as she described the Dec. 12, 2020, mauling at Brown’s home in the Tarzana neighborhood of Los Angeles. She said the attack left her with severe injuries to her arm and face, extensive scarring, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I will never be the same again,” she told jurors in the courtroom in Van Nuys, California, on June 24.
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. Pandemic restrictions barred her family from visiting during her five days in the hospital, forcing her to endure the ordeal alone.
A mother of three, Avila told jurors that nerve damage and chronic sensitivity on her left side still make it hard for her to sleep and carry out basic daily tasks. She no longer has the arm strength to scrub floors or wring out a mop, she said. Meanwhile, the attack also left her afraid of all dogs. That fear, combined with her physical limitations, has effectively ended her career as a housekeeper, since most of her former clients own dogs, she said.
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Avila’s daughter, Yoseline Espinoza, testified after her mother, recalling the panicked call she received from her aunt, Patricia Avila, who had also been working at the house that day and filed her own claims against Brown. “She was just freaking out, telling me, ‘Your mom can’t breathe. She keeps passing out on me. The ambulance is still not here. Chris Brown fled the scene,'” Espinoza testified. “I did not think she was going to make it.”
Brown, 37, testified as the first witness at the trial. He told jurors he heard the dog, Hades, growling outside and rushed downstairs to find Avila face down and motionless on the ground. He told jurors he locked up the dog, called out to his security guard to summon help, and bent down to make sure Avila was breathing. He acknowledged he didn’t personally call 911, saying he feared a recording would be leaked to the media. He also said he never touched Avila, offered her water, brought her a towel, or gave her any comfort beyond telling her help was on the way.
Describing Avila’s injuries for the jury, the singer pointed to his forehead and traced a finger down his nose and under his eye. “It was cut, like, severed,” he said. “I know it’s graphic, but you could see the skin was kind of raised. You could see the cut and the blood coming out. …It was a lot of blood.”
Brown said he left his property before paramedics arrived because he’s a celebrity. He said his manager allegedly suggested it. He also confirmed he never asked his security to preserve his home surveillance video from the incident.
“What would have been the problem with you being there and waiting for paramedics to get there with a woman bleeding in your driveway? Why would that be a problem for you as a celebrity?” Avila’s lawyer, Nancy Doumanian, asked, incredulous.
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“Because of how my image is and always used. I didn’t want a misleading story, or like a circus, from my status. It’s pretty sticky when it comes to that. So me staying out of the way was advised,” he said.
“Didn’t you think your reputation would take a bigger hit if you fled the scene?” Doumanian pressed.
Brown said he did not flee. He said he spent a couple of hours driving around and stopped at a gas station before he was advised it was safe to return home.
Avila testified that she didn’t know the large Caucasian Shepherd, also known as a Central Asian Ovcharka, was on the property that day. She told jurors she only saw Brown’s two other dogs, small French bulldogs, and she denied Brown’s claim that he warned her not to go outside without an escort because there was a third dog on the property that was not friendly.
Speaking softly, Avila said she had gone outside to empty a vacuum bag when the attack occurred, and that she can only recall flashes of the mauling and its aftermath. She told jurors she had to leave the courtroom during opening statements when graphic photos of her injuries were displayed, and that she still hasn’t been able to look at them. “It’s very hard for me. I can’t,” she said.
With her hands visibly shaking, she rolled up her left sleeve and walked to the jury box, turning her gaze to the wall as jurors examined the raised and pitted skin covering much of her forearm. She then removed her glasses and swept back her bangs to reveal a pattern of scars running from beneath her left eye up across her forehead.
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Before trial, Brown admitted negligence under California’s dog-bite statute in a court filing. He continued to dispute the extent of Avila’s injuries and claimed she was partly at fault for going outside alone. Brown’s attorney acknowledged during jury selection that Avila was entitled to some damages but said there was a “difference of opinion” over the amount.
Several prospective jurors were dismissed early in the selection process after saying they could not be impartial because of Brown’s 2009 felony assault conviction involving his then-girlfriend Rihanna. The judge previously ruled that history was not relevant to the case, but the prospective jurors brought it up on their own.
Socialist Momentum Grows as Melat Kiros Wins in Denver
Socialist Momentum Grows as Melat Kiros Wins in Denver
A democratic socialist who lost her job for speaking out about Gaza unseated a 29-year incumbent.
Akela Lacy
July 1 2026, 12:09 a.m. ET
Melat Kiros at a League of Women Voters candidate forum at Montview Presbyterian Church on May 28, 2026, in Denver.
Photo: RJ Sangosti/TheDenver Post via Getty Images
Leftists toppled a three-decade incumbent they’d made the face of the Democratic Party’s failures on Tuesday in Denver amid an anti-establishment wave that has powered progressive and socialist midterm victories across the country.
Voters chose democratic socialist Melat Kiros, an attorney who lost her job for condemning her industry’s silence on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, ahead of longtime Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat representing Denver who touted progressive positions on domestic issues but drew criticism that she had grown complacent over three decades in Congress and generally followed the party line on support for Israel.
DeGette’s defeat in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District brought more bad news for Democratic incumbents reeling after losses in New York last week. Party leaders are facing a surge in public frustration with their brand and a cascade of voters who say they don’t wield power effectively. Though some Democratic leaders have discounted those races and claimed that the ascendant candidates’ vision is out of step with the party’s base, leftists and progressives are continuing to notch wins under their noses as they take the battle over the future of the Democratic Party to the polls.
“In the last week, we have taken out 40 years of incumbency,” said Usamah Andrabi, spokesperson for Justice Democrats, which backed Kiros and two of the candidates who won in New York.
Members of the Democratic establishment “hate that they can no longer simply spend unlimited sums of money to buy a seat in Congress, and we are truly proving that organized people power and mass movements can beat the money,” he said. “We’re just having an amazing fucking cycle.”
Kiros, who will face Republican Christy Peterson in November, is heavily favored to win in the solid Democratic district.
“In the last week, we have taken out 40 years of incumbency.”
Anti-incumbent sentiment also came through in the tight Democratic race for governor, where the state attorney general framed himself as the choice against the establishment despite holding statewide office. Two-term Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser defeated sitting Sen. Michael Bennet after casting himself as outsider who went after President Donald Trump in court dozens of times and won — a fairly standard tactic for Democratic state attorneys general.
That’s not to say every race in Colorado was a warning sign for the establishment. In the statewide race for Senate, the incumbent safely kept his seat as progressive challenger Julie Gonzales fell short of ousting centrist Sen. John Hickenlooper. (Hickenlooper had refused to debate Gonzales and tried to thwart her run early in the race.)
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Mixed Results in Key Districts
In the district encompassing Colorado Springs, Jessica Killin, an Army veteran and previous chief of staff to former second husband Doug Emhoff, easily beat Joe Reagan, a populist second-time candidate and fellow veteran. Killin had far outraised him with the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Days before the 5th Congressional District primary, Killin pledged to sign onto a new pact from conservative House Democrats to promote capitalism, equating socialism with the right-wing MAGA movement and promising to fight both. Killin will face first-term incumbent GOP Rep. Jeff Crank, whose district the Cook Political Report changed from “solid” to “likely” Republican.
State Rep. Manny Rutinel, a self-proclaimed progressive who’d recently reneged on some of his policy pledges, meanwhile, beat a former state lawmaker backed by conservative Democrats’ Blue Dog PAC in the 8th District, rated a “toss up” and one of the DCCC’s “races in play” that could help determine control of the House. He’ll face freshman GOP Rep. Gabe Evans, who was ranked last summer as the most vulnerable incumbent in the country.
Rutinel campaigned in the heavily Latino district on fighting the “cruelty” of Trump’s immigration policy and attacked the record of his opponent, Shannon Bird, on the issue. He positioned himself as the candidate who would do more to rein in Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Backed by the campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Rutinel backed off of some of his more left-leaning stances during his campaign, such as restricting military funding for Israel, establishing Medicare for All, and opposing fracking. He ran without the support of the Working Families Party, which had previously endorsed him but backed another candidate who dropped out of the race.
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I'm inWhile Blue Dog-backed Bird had the institutional support of the centrist and party-aligned New Democrat Coalition Action Fund and EMILY’s List as well as the pro-Israel Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, Rutinel had the advantage in fundraising and dominated ad space.
“Voters can see through the hollow words and platitudes of the corporate-backed candidates who have tried to hijack our working families-centered messaging during this campaign,” said Carlos Valverde, Southwest regional director for the Working Families Party. “People are tired of status-quo, do-nothing politics that protect the comfortable while working families struggle with housing, healthcare, wages, and basic dignity.”
In Denver, according to Andrabi, on-the-ground energy from the campaign’s supporters made the crucial difference. While DeGette received a last-minute infusion of super PAC money, the Kiros campaign “knocked 115,000 doors in this race, which is just insane.”
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I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
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