Taylor & Ring

As John C. Taylor and David M. Ring approach the 20-year anniversary of their firm opening, the partners proudly reflect on helping victims of sexual abuse, catastrophic personal injury, police misconduct and wrongful death.

“It’s really rewarding to help these folks get some power back in their lives, and to gain a little bit of closure and justice,” Ring said.

The firm’s nine trial lawyers have won multimillion-dollar verdicts and precedent-setting decisions in industries where transparency and accountability are often lacking, such as government agencies, law enforcement and school districts.

Ring filed a case in Los Angeles Superior Court in late 2020 suing the Moreno Valley Unified School District on behalf of the family of Diego Stolz, a 13-year-old boy who was killed by bullies at his middle school. Salcedo v. Moreno Valley Unified School District, RIC2003604 (Riverside Sup. Ct., filed, Sept. 11, 2020). The suit alleged the school largely ignored pleas made by the teen and his family to address the bullying.

In an attack captured on video, two assailants sucker-punched Stolz and continued hitting him after he struck his head against a pillar and fell unconscious. Stolz never regained consciousness and died eight days later.

He had been attacked previously on campus by the same boys and had complained to school officials in the days leading up to the deadly assault.

“The school could’ve easily found surveillance video of that and suspended those kids, but they blew it off,” Ring said. “They told Diego to come back to school Monday, that it would be taken care of. He went back to school and they hadn’t done anything, and that’s when he was ambushed by these kids and killed. It’s just outrageous. That’s a really important case to me because I take bullying very seriously.”

The school district said it replaced the school’s administrators, changed how bullying reports are handled and increased training for administrators.

Taylor has handled more than 125 jury trials in diverse fields, including police misconduct. Last December, he filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the family of Kurt Reinhold, an unarmed black man who was shot and killed by Orange County Sheriff’s Department deputies a few months earlier. Reinhold v. County of Orange, 8:20-cv-02369 (C.D. Cal, filed Dec. 17, 2020).

In February, the sheriff’s department released a video of the events leading up to Reinhold’s death. The footage depicted the deputies debating whether to stop Reinhold for jaywalking. In response, the firm amended its complaint to assert that the deputies had no reason to approach Reinhold and were racially motivated. The incident and released video sparked protests and garnered national media coverage.

“Here we are a year since, and there’s still no decision, and no statement by the district attorney or by the sheriff’s department as to whether the shooting was legal or within its policy,” Taylor said. “The officers are back on the street. It’s extremely frustrating for the family to have no answers – to feel that, from the beginning, the county has done what it can to create a narrative of Kurt Reinhold somehow being a threat to the officers.”

As jury trials resume, Taylor said he hopes prominent cases like Reinhold’s will help bring about a critical examination of police training, reporting and accountability.

—Jennifer Chung Klam