{"id":10512,"date":"2026-04-29T10:42:57","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T10:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/chris-brown-wants-rihanna-assault-barred-from-dog-attack-trial\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T10:42:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T10:42:57","slug":"chris-brown-wants-rihanna-assault-barred-from-dog-attack-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/chris-brown-wants-rihanna-assault-barred-from-dog-attack-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Brown Wants Rihanna Assault Barred From Dog Attack Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tChris Brown is urging a judge to bar any reference to his infamous 2009 domestic assault of Rihanna during an upcoming trial over his housekeeper\u2019s dog bite injuries.<\/p>\n

\n\tTrial is slated to begin this June in the case brought by Maria Avila, who claims Brown\u2019s 200-pound dog Hades \u201cviciously and brutally mauled\u201d her while she was cleaning the R&B star\u2019s Los Angeles-area house in 2020. Avila is seeking financial damages from Brown, who denies any liability for the alleged incident.<\/p>\n

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\n\tWith the trial fast approaching, lawyers for the two sides are now debating what evidence will be admissible for the jury to hear. Brown\u2019s attorneys want the judge to exclude any references to the singer\u2019s domestic violence record, including his felony plea for notoriously assaulting then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAllowing the jury to hear of these domestic violence incidents at trial would encourage the jury to decide the case based on character or emotion, rather than the facts and applicable law,\u201d wrote attorneys Michael Schonbuch<\/strong> and Abigail Morelli<\/strong> in a pretrial motion this past January.<\/p>\n

\n\tBrown\u2019s lawyers similarly asked the judge to bar any mention of his pending U.K. criminal case for allegedly assaulting a music producer with a bottle at a London nightclub. They argued that referencing these charges, which Brown denies, would \u201cinvite jurors to draw improper character inferences and view the defendant as a criminal or otherwise morally blameworthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAvila\u2019s attorney, Nancy Doumanian<\/strong>, countered in a Monday (April 27) response filing that Brown\u2019s motions should be rejected as \u201coverbroad, premature and legally unsound.\u201d Doumanian said it\u2019s too soon to say whether evidence of Brown\u2019s criminal record will be relevant at the trial. Such evidence might be appropriate material for cross-examination, she argued, \u201cif defendants or their witnesses testify in a manner that portrays defendant as law-abiding or non-threatening.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tA judge is set to rule on the pretrial motions at a final hearing on June 5. The trial is then slated to begin on June 15.<\/p>\n

\n\tReps for Avila, Brown and Rihanna did not immediately return requests for comment on the matter on Tuesday (April 28).<\/p>\n

\n\tAvila\u2019s lawsuit, in which she is joined by her husband and her sister, alleges she was taking out the trash at Brown\u2019s Tarzana home when Hades, the dog, attacked her out of nowhere and began \u201cripping off large chunks of her skin.\u201d She claims Brown saw what happened and fled the scene with Hades, leaving her \u201calone and bleeding profusely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to Avila, Brown is to blame because he should have known that this breed of dog, known as the Caucasian shepherd, had a propensity for unprovoked violence. She now wants the star to pay for her \u201cpermanent and debilitating injuries,\u201d including facial disfigurement, scarring, vision loss and nerve damage.<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
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Chris Brown is urging a judge to bar any reference to his infamous 2009 domestic assault of Rihanna during an upcoming trial over his housekeeper\u2019s dog bite injuries. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[302,1583,5538,1683,2662,7860,4020,342],"class_list":["post-10512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-assault","tag-attack","tag-barred","tag-brown","tag-chris","tag-dog","tag-rihanna","tag-trial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}