Ava Hargett

A Los Angeles County jury awarded the parents of a 16-year-old baseball player $61,768,000 after finding that Darryl Hicks and Tung Ming, two drivers who chased each other at 80 to 85 mph through Torrance, ran a red light and struck the family's minivan, killing the boy and seriously injuring his father. The December 2023 verdict split fault 95 percent to Ming and 5 percent to Hicks and included punitive damages against both men. Both drivers had already been convicted of felony vehicular manslaughter. The trial court later cut the jury's non-economic damages award 20 percent and entered an amended judgment against Ming of $47,410,000 in April 2024, which Ming has appealed.

In January 2024 a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury awarded $35 million to a woman identified in court as Jane Doe No. 4, who said a Pomona High School assistant track coach raped her in 1997 when she was 16. She said the principal told her to speak to no one about it. The jury assigned 70 percent of fault to Pomona Unified School District and 30 percent to the coach.

A Los Angeles County jury found Westerly School, a private K-8 school in Long Beach, 35 percent liable for years of sexual abuse committed against a teenage boy who spent his days on its campus, abused by the after-school program director the school employed. In June 2018 the jury awarded $25.3 million: $300,000 in future medical costs, $10 million in past pain and suffering, and $15 million in future pain and suffering, with the remaining fault split between the abuser and the plaintiff's parents. Westerly's apportioned share came to just under $9 million. The school's Head of School said Westerly was saddened by the abuse but would not say whether it planned to appeal, and no appeal was later reported.

A Santa Barbara jury awarded $25 million to a man identified in court papers as John Doe #2, who was groomed and sexually abused as a teenager by Justin Sell, a former security guard and assistant football coach at Dos Pueblos High School. The December 2023 verdict, reached after a three week trial, apportioned 80 percent of the fault to Santa Barbara Unified School District for keeping Sell employed and failing to report his conduct to law enforcement despite staff being mandated reporters. John Taylor and Natalie Weatherford of Taylor & Ring represented the plaintiff.

A Santa Clara County jury awarded $37.5 million to a woman represented by Natalie Weatherford of Taylor & Ring, part of a combined $102.5 million verdict against Union School District for failing to act on years of warnings about music teacher Samuel Neipp, who abused her and another student at Dartmouth Middle School. The trial judge later denied the district's motion for a new trial and its challenge to the judgment, leaving the verdict intact.