Chris Brown has scored a small win in a pending lawsuit against him — but he shouldn’t declare victory just yet.
Court documents obtained by RadarOnline reveal that Brown’s legal team asked the Los Angeles Superior Court to push back the trial date for a pending dog bite lawsuit back from September 2023 to December 2023. Brown’s legal team argued that the housekeeper who brought the suit against him “would not be harmed” by the date being pushed back.
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What’s more, Brown’s team argued that the housekeeper who was bitten is still being treated for her injuries under her worker’s compensation claims, which means the team is unable to gather key evidence needed for them to proceed with the trial.
The judge presiding over the case granted the motion.
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Though Radar didn’t reveal the plaintiff’s name, a previous report by PEOPLE revealed that the suit was being brought by Chris Brown’s former housekeeper, Patricia Avila, who claimed that one of Brown’s two dogs attacked her sister, Maria, while the pair were tending to the singer’s house back in 2020.
The dog in question — a Caucasian ovcharka — allegedly growled at Maria and “proceeded to viciously attack” her when she went into the backyard to empty the vacuum.
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Patricia allegedly ran outside “where she found her sister covered in blood while she was screaming and crying for help.” Brown then personally made the call to 911, with Patricia saying Maria was left with injuries around her eye, bites on her leg and inches of skin missing from her arm. The injuries led her to spending several days in hospital, requiring two surgeries.
The large dog that allegedly attacked her can weigh between 110 and 200 lbs. Prior to the incident, the dogs had apparently been kept in another part of the property where the housekeepers didn’t see them.
The lawsuit also states Patricia “suffered severe emotional distress,” including post-traumatic stress disorder, severe anxiety, depression and panic attacks. As a result of that, she “is reluctant to leave her home and cannot stop re-living the pain that she experienced as she watched her sister suffer through that horrendous attack that day.”
While Chris Brown is claiming that the dog attacked the housekeepers after the pair “provoked” him, California is what’s known as a “strict liability” state. According to Forbes, this means that the dog owner is responsible for all dog bites, as long as the bites happen either on public property (such as a park) or on private property where the victim was authorized to be there. Trespassers or other unauthorized visitors to private property are not covered by the strict liability rule.
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It’s worth noting, however, that a valid defense against the strict liability rule is if “the victim provoked the dog and was fully or partly responsible for the incident,” which Chris Brown is claiming as a defense.
