Jury Awards $600,000 Against Massage Therapist and Spa for Sexual Assault

On June 14, 2024, a 53-year-old woman went to Trinity Massage and Spa in North Little Rock, Arkansas, for a scheduled evening massage. She had worked as a masseuse herself, and she told the therapist beforehand that she was stressed and dealing with nightmares from post-traumatic stress disorder and hoped the session would settle her anxiety.

During the massage the therapist, 35-year-old Nikkolas Lee Huerta of Cabot, handled her breasts in a way that made her uncomfortable, and she told him to stop. When he groped her further, she pushed him away, got dressed and left the room, telling the receptionist on her way out that she would not be back. She estimated she had spent about fifteen minutes with him. She called North Little Rock police immediately afterward.

She sued the following month in Pulaski County Circuit Court, bringing claims against Huerta for sexual assault and battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and a separate negligent hiring and training claim against his employer, Trinity Massage LLC. The seven-page complaint alleged the spa never ran a background check or contacted Huerta's previous employers before putting him alone in a room with clients, gave its staff no training on preventing or responding to sexual assault, and overlooked an employment history that included being fired from an earlier massage job over what the suit described as an 'almost identical incident' involving a client. Jay Neal and Austin King of Taylor King and Associates in Arkadelphia filed the suit for her. Robert Newcomb of Little Rock represented Huerta, and Danielle Hasty of Lion Legal represented the spa's owner, Keri Janowski.

Negligent hiring claims like this one turn on whether an employer knew or should have known that a worker posed a danger to the people it put him in contact with, and whether the employer took reasonable steps to find that out before hiring him or to supervise him afterward. Janowski testified that she believed she had vetted Huerta adequately and was unaware of any prior accusations against him. That was the question jurors had to weigh against Trinity Massage, separately from the assault claims against Huerta himself.

The case was tried in a single day before Circuit Judge Shawn Johnson in February 2026. Huerta, who had countersued the woman for defamation and dropped that claim shortly before trial, denied wrongdoing. The jury, nine women and three men, returned a unanimous verdict against both defendants: $500,000 against Huerta personally and a separate $100,000 against Trinity Massage LLC for negligent hiring, for a combined $600,000. Arkansas civil trials do not require unanimity, so the woman needed only nine of the twelve jurors.

Huerta was arrested seven months after the encounter, and his massage license was suspended by the Arkansas Department of Health. At the time of the civil verdict he was scheduled to stand trial the following month on separate rape and sexual assault charges carrying a potential life sentence, and he had pleaded not guilty. That criminal case is separate from this civil judgment and does not change the amount the jury awarded here. No appeal of the civil verdict has been reported.