Taylor & Ring LLP

Personal Injury

Manhattan Beach

The #MeToo sea change has touched virtually everything, and it’s certainly made Taylor & Ring busier.

“People feel they have a voice now. We as a firm have been getting a lot more inquiries than before,” said Louanne Masry, a partner at the Manhattan Beach firm, which over the past two decades has handled many big sexual assault cases.

And jurors are starting to be more receptive to plaintiffs as a result of the attention to sexual assault. This year the firm secured a $45 million jury verdict against the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services on behalf of a child who at age 7 was living in the same room with a known sexual predator. As a result of supervisors failing to pass along reports of the girl’s abuse, the conduct continued for two years.

Taylor & Ring attorneys had to spin some creative legal yarn to implicate the department, which as a governmental entity was protected by broad immunity. “You can’t sue them for not having removed a kid,” said David Ring, a firm founder who tried the case.

Instead, Ring and Masry pursued a different theory, consisting of not reporting suspected child abuse. The jury delivered the verdict in 4½ hours.

“I think people are now willing to look at institutions,” said John Taylor, a firm founder.

The firm is also offering legal counsel to an Italian actress who says she was sexually assaulted by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. No legal action has been filed but if Weinstein is criminally convicted that opens up the statute of limitations for a year regarding the filing of a civil claim.

Earlier this year, Taylor obtained a $25 million verdict against a former Long Beach coach who abused a young teenage boy. An appellate court also upheld a $10 million wrongful death verdict against Los Angeles Police Detective Stephanie Lazarus, who killed a woman as a result of a botched burglary.

The firm is also suing the University of Southern California and former school gynecologist George Tyndall, accused of sexually assaulting over 30 patients during a 16-year period.

And in a nail-biting hostage situation that attracted media attention this summer, the firm is also representing the family of Melyda Corado, who was killed during the Los Angeles Police Department pursuit of a gunman at Trader Joe’s in the Silver Lake area. Police shot the gunman as he entered the grocery store, killing the 27-year-old manager in the crossfire.

“Out of that three-hour negotiation the only person that died was at the hands of LAPD,” said Ring, who recently filed a claim against the department.

— Justin Kloczko