Chris Brown Says Rihanna Assault Shouldn’t Be Mentioned at Dog Attack Trial

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’s dog bite injuries.

Trial is slated to begin this June in the case brought by Maria Avila, who claims Brown’s 200-pound dog Hades “viciously and brutally mauled” her while she was cleaning the R&B star’s Los Angeles-area house in 2020. Avila is seeking financial damages from Brown, who denies any liability for the alleged incident.

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

“Allowing 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,” wrote attorneys Michael Schonbuch and Abigail Morelli in a pretrial motion this past January.

Brown’s 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 “invite jurors to draw improper character inferences and view the defendant as a criminal or otherwise morally blameworthy.”

Avila’s attorney, Nancy Doumanian, countered in a Monday (April 27) response filing that Brown’s motions should be rejected as “overbroad, premature and legally unsound.” Doumanian said it’s too soon to say whether evidence of Brown’s criminal record will be relevant at the trial. Such evidence might be appropriate material for cross-examination, she argued, “if defendants or their witnesses testify in a manner that portrays defendant as law-abiding or non-threatening.”

A 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.

Reps for Avila, Brown and Rihanna did not immediately return requests for comment on the matter on Tuesday (April 28).

Avila’s lawsuit, in which she is joined by her husband and her sister, alleges she was taking out the trash at Brown’s Tarzana home when Hades, the dog, attacked her out of nowhere and began “ripping off large chunks of her skin.” She claims Brown saw what happened and fled the scene with Hades, leaving her “alone and bleeding profusely.”

According 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 “permanent and debilitating injuries,” including facial disfigurement, scarring, vision loss and nerve damage.