Chris Brown was seated at the defense table in a Los Angeles courtroom on Tuesday, poised to testify at his dog-mauling trial, when the judge declared a mistrial due to juror misconduct.
“Unfortunately, one of the jurors has violated my admonitions against searching the internet for information, and not only that, but he also shared it, and as a consequence, I have to declare a mistrial,” Judge Huey P. Cotton said. After the panel left, he told the lawyers to remain and they would start picking a new jury from a pool already assembled downstairs.
Brown, who’s set to be the first witness in the civil case, then asked the court for another delay. He had a flight leaving Tuesday night to go see his newborn son in Las Vegas, his lawyer said. The judge ordered Brown back on Thursday morning. The musician welcomed the baby in April with partner Jada Wallace, who announced the arrival in an April 26 Instagram post.
During jury selection on Monday, lawyers disclosed that Brown had accepted partial responsibility in the case after contesting the claims for years. He now agrees that his former housekeeper, Maria Avila, suffered damages when a massive security dog at his Los Angeles home attacked her on Dec. 12, 2020, as she stepped outside to take out the trash. His lawyer said the trial will center on a “difference of opinion” over how much Brown and his company should pay Avila, and whether Avila’s sister, who was present at the time, and Avila’s husband, who claims loss of consortium, are entitled to compensation as well.
In her lawsuit, Avila says the large dog appeared out of nowhere and started tearing flesh — and even bone — from her face and arm as she “screamed in terror and called out for help.” She claims Brown came outside, stood over her while talking on his phone, then “fled the scene” as she lay bleeding in the driveway. Avila says she needed emergency surgery and now suffers permanent disfigurement, nerve damage, and vision loss.
“It attacked me on my face, my hand, and it pierced its teeth on my foot,” she said in an October 2023 deposition. “I didn’t see it, I simply felt it — it was something really big.”
Avila didn’t see Brown take the dog away, she said. “I only heard the car that left,” she testified as she also disputed Brown’s claim she’d been told not to go outside without permission.
Avila’s sister, Patricia, alleges she ran outside and found Maria “covered in blood,” a scene that traumatized her. She claims she held her bleeding sister in her arms and reasonably believed she was on the verge of death as Brown and others allegedly kept their distance.
In his own pretrial deposition, Brown testified he was upstairs before the incident and heard the dog, Hades, growling. “Hearing the actual growl is what actually shocked me, to make me go downstairs,” he said. When he reached the driveway, he found the housekeeper “face down” on the ground, he claimed.
“I didn’t touch her. I bent down, and I looked. I was — I was making sure she was breathing, and then from there, I ran and put the dogs away and yelled and told the security guard to come over,” Brown said under oath. Asked how he knew she was breathing, he said: “I could see her chest moving.”
Brown claimed he saw no blood and left only after his manager told him paramedics were on the way. He said he had no role in removing Hades before police arrived, or in the decision to have a security guard drive the Caucasian Shepherd, also known as a Central Asian Ovcharka, to Humboldt County, where the dog was abandoned before it was picked up by authorities and euthanized.
The judge hearing the trial previously granted Brown’s request to bar any mention of his 2009 felony assault of his ex-girlfriend, Rihanna. During jury selection on Monday, several prospective jurors said they couldn’t be unbiased because they knew about his history of domestic violence. The judge said that history was not relevant to the dog mauling trial, but he dismissed the jurors anyway.
