TORRANCE, Calif., July 1 (UPI) -- A security company has been ordered to pay $58 million to a man who suffered permanent brain damage in a beating by a bouncer in a Los Angeles bar.
Antonio Lopez Chaj, a Guatemalan immigrant who had been working as a house painter, was left unable to care for himself or to speak, his attorney, Federico Castelan Sayre, told The (Torrance, Calif.) Daily Breeze. Family members have been pooling $600 a month to provide the help he needs.
"He knows he's horribly damaged and he cries about it," Sayre said.
Sayre said the fight that led to the beating began when a bartender at La Barra Latina 2 refused Chaj's nephew a drink. Chaj intervened when a security guard employed by DGSP Security and Patrol Services beat the nephew and was knocked to the ground and kicked.
A jury at the South Bay Courthouse in Torrance reached its verdict Friday. Sayre said the security company did not check to make sure the guard had a license and had been trained for the job.
Sayre represented Rodney King, the black driver whose videotaped beating by police in 1991 became international news.
