$10.37 Million Federal Verdict for Family of Gilbert Flores, Shot by Deputies While Hands Were Raised
Won by Thomas J. Henry.
A federal jury in San Antonio awarded $10.37 million to the family of Gilbert Flores, a 41-year-old father killed by two Bexar County sheriff's deputies in August 2015 after video evidence showed he had his hands raised when the fatal shots were fired.
What happened
On August 28, 2015, Bexar County sheriff's deputies Greg Vazquez and Robert Sanchez responded to a northwest San Antonio home on a domestic disturbance call. Gilbert Flores, a 41-year-old husband and father, was outside the residence holding a knife. Within minutes of their arrival, both deputies fired, striking and killing him.
A neighbor recorded the confrontation on a cell phone. That footage became the center of the case. A digital forensics analyst, retained by the plaintiffs, concluded that for roughly four seconds before the shots were fired, Flores's hands, the knife he was holding, and his feet were all motionless. The video showed his hands raised. Both deputies said they believed Flores still posed an active threat, but the jury ultimately rejected that account.
A grand jury declined to indict either deputy months after the shooting, and both were returned to duty from administrative leave. The Flores family's only remaining path to accountability was a federal civil-rights lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, alleging the deputies used excessive and unnecessary deadly force in violation of Flores's Fourth Amendment rights.
Thomas J. Henry represented the Flores family in the federal proceeding. After three days of testimony in March 2022, the jury found both Vazquez and Sanchez liable. Compensatory damages of $1,435,000 were assessed against each deputy. The jury also imposed punitive damages: $5 million against Vazquez and $2.5 million against Sanchez, bringing the total verdict to $10,370,000.
In a statement following the verdict, Henry said the outcome demonstrated 'that we will not tolerate the use of excessive force that kills our citizens,' and noted that without the neighbor's video, the family may never have obtained any form of justice. Bexar County transferred handling of the case defense to its insurance carrier after the verdict was returned. No post-verdict reduction has been reported in court records or coverage reviewed to date.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.KSAT News: Jury concludes 2 BCSO deputies used excessive force; awards family members more than $10 million (March 24, 2022)·Archived copy
- 2.News4 San Antonio: Family of man shot and killed by Bexar deputies awarded more than $10 million (March 2022)·Archived copy
- 3.Lawlor Media Group: Thomas J. Henry's Firm Wins $10.37 Million Verdict (April 4, 2022)·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Thomas J. Henry
All Thomas J. Henry proven verdicts →In February 2022, a federal judge ordered the United States to pay $230 million to survivors and families of the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting after finding the Air Force 60 percent liable for failing to report the gunman's criminal history to the federal background check system.
A Bexar County jury returned a $59.8 million verdict, later converted to a $60.09 million judgment, for 23-year-old Armando Guerrero III after a drunk driver ran a red light at nearly twice the posted speed limit on Southwest Military Drive.
A Bexar County jury in November 2017 returned a verdict reported at $43.5 million for Jenny Hennes of Lytle, who was rear-ended on I-35 in San Antonio in 2015 by an SUV that belonged to oilfield services company JC Fodale Energy Services and was driven by its employee Mickey Hunt. Jurors heard that Hunt had texted more than 2,000 times while driving in the five months before the crash. The award included $30 million in punitive damages against the company and $2.5 million against Hunt. While the defendants' appeal was pending, the parties settled on undisclosed terms that released the judgment, and the appeal was dismissed in January 2019.
A Nueces County jury awarded Vanice Chatman-Wilson $24 million, including $10 million in punitive damages, after a Coca-Cola employee on a hands-free business call turned left into oncoming traffic and crushed Chatman-Wilson's car at a downtown Corpus Christi intersection.
Related wrongful death verdicts
In December 2011, a Fayette County, Texas jury awarded the family of an 8-year-old Splendora boy $150.37 billion after he was doused with gasoline and set on fire by a 13-year-old neighbor in 1998, two weeks after the same neighbor sexually assaulted him. The boy survived third-degree burns over 99 percent of his body for nearly 13 years before dying in April 2011 of a skin cancer linked to his injuries. The defendant, Don Wilburn Collins, never appeared to answer the civil suit, and the jury awarded $370 million in actual damages plus roughly $150 billion in punitive damages, the largest civil verdict in U.S. history. Attorney Craig Sico, who represented the family, said from the outset that the judgment was not collectible and was intended to pressure prosecutors into reopening the long-dormant criminal case. Prosecutors did reopen the case, and Collins was later convicted of capital murder in a separate criminal proceeding.
A Pensacola jury awarded Cynthia Robinson $23.6 billion in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds over the 1996 lung cancer death of her 36-year-old husband, the largest single-plaintiff award of Florida's Engle tobacco litigation, but the trial judge called the number constitutionally excessive, an appeals court ordered a full retrial over improper closing arguments, and a second jury returned a complete defense verdict in 2019, so the estate ultimately collected nothing.
Frantz Law Group, representing roughly 5,000 victims, helped negotiate a $13.5 billion PG&E bankruptcy settlement covering tens of thousands of survivors and families from the 2015 Butte, 2017 North Bay, and 2018 Camp wildfires.