Carl E. Douglas

The case from the past year that Douglas is most proud of began eight years earlier when, in his words, “an unarmed Black man … was basically suffocated by a collection of police officers when they were attempting to handcuff him.”

Douglas, along with two other teams of attorneys, represented the man’s wife and children in consolidated lawsuits against the Los Angeles Police Department. The defense offered zero dollars to settle, so the plaintiffs had to go to trial.

The 12-week trial, taking place just months before the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, “was a perfect storm for civil rights lawyers,” he said. The jury returned a verdict of $8 million.

Last August, the state Supreme Court upheld the entire amount and set an important precedent that comparative negligence cannot be used to reduce damages from an intentional tort. B.B. v. County of Los Angeles, 10 Cal.5th 1 (Cal. 2020)

“This year in particular has been the culmination of seven years of struggle fighting for justice” for the man’s family, Douglas said about the case.

A former member of Johnnie Cochran’s law office and part of the O.J. Simpson “dream team,” Douglas likes to say that “the Creator put me on this earth to sue cops.”

Of the roughly 90 cases in his office currently, about 17 are over deaths. Of those, about six were shootings and eight were positional asphyxiation, he said. Thirteen of the cases had what called “a mental health component.”

“They see the guy on the worst day of his life, and then he dies,” he said.

Douglas takes on other sorts of lawsuits, as well. He has represented professor and Black Lives Matter co-founder Melina Abdullah in three cases, including a high-profile suit accusing former Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey and her husband of threatening protesters. Abdullah v. Lacey, 20STCV40080 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Oct 19, 2020)

He is also suing Inglewood Mayor James Butts for sexual harassment and abuse on behalf of the mayor’s former executive assistant and girlfriend.

Douglas, who was a deputy federal public defender early in his career, describes himself as a litigation jack of all trades. “I have won a murder case; I have lost a murder case. I have won a million dollars as a trial lawyer; I have lost a million dollars.”

— Don DeBenedictis