R&B star Chris Brown has been told to Pay $13m to a housekeeper who was badly hurt by his guard dog, a California jury decided this week. The case took more than five years to settle.
The Guardian UK reported that the claim came from Maria Avila, who was attacked in 2020 at Brown’s home in Tarzana, Los Angeles. She said the dog, a Caucasian shepherd named Hades, bit her arm and face. The injuries were serious. She needed many stitches and skin grafts from her stomach, and she still deals with nerve damage and trauma that made work hard.
Brown was at home at the time. He told the Van Nuys court he locked the dog in a kennel after it attacked, and a guard called an ambulance. He said he left before it arrived to avoid press attention, and that he kept guard dogs because of stalkers. He admitted he was at fault but said he had warned Avila and her sister to stay inside. The Avilas said that never happened, and they disagreed with him on how bad the injuries were.
The jury backed Avila. The Guardian UK also said her sister Patricia was given $885,000 for emotional distress, and Maria’s husband Oscar Olivo got $50,000.
“After more than five years, we are glad we got justice for Patricia,” her lawyer Michael C. Murphy Jr. told Rolling Stone, as reported by The Guardian.
This is not Brown’s first run-in with the law. In 2009 he pleaded guilty to assaulting Rihanna and was put on probation, given community service and a restraining order. He served 131 days in jail in 2014 for breaking probation. He settled another assault case in 2016, and an ex-partner got a restraining order against him in 2017.
He is also due in court in the UK. Brown was charged in 2025 with causing serious harm after a 2023 fight with music producer Abraham Diaw at a members’ club in Mayfair, London. He pleaded not guilty at Southwark Crown Court. His trial starts on 26 October with co-defendant Omololu Akinlolu, who performs as HoodyBaby.
Brown also lost a $500m defamation case in January against the makers of the documentary Chris Brown: A History of Violence. A judge said the film was fair, but let his case against a woman who accused him of rape on a Miami yacht in 2020 move forward.
Despite the legal issues, Brown is still one of America’s biggest R&B acts, with eight platinum albums out of 12. He is now on a stadium tour with Usher across the US and Canada.