David M. Ring

Manhattan Beach

Plaintiff sexual abuse & personal injury

David M. Ring, who founded the Taylor & Ring law firm two decades ago with partner John C. Taylor, has spent more than 25 years representing children and adults who have suffered sexual abuse in cases against institutes such as schools, churches and youth organizations.

He began his legal career in 1991 as an insurance defense lawyer, but after two years, came to the realization that he needed to be on the other side of the table. After handling a number of personal injury matters, his team came across a child sexual abuse case, which Ring and his law partner at the time, Patrick McNicholas, took to trial and won a favorable verdict for. “That’s really what got me started along this path … I’ve seen it all,” he said.

Earlier this year, he was able to resolve a student-on-student sexual assault case against an elementary school in Los Angeles County for $6.8 million. “These are typically tough cases because the assault wasn’t done by a teacher or staff member, it was another student,” he said. “Not many kid-on-kid sexual abuse cases settle for that amount of money.”

The case involved a female student who was being abused by her former male classmates. Jane Doe v. Walnut Valley Unified School District, 21STCV00259 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Jan. 5, 2021).

In a fight against the Moraga School District in 2021, he obtained a $5 million settlement on behalf of a woman who had been sexually abused by her male middle school teacher in the mid-1990s. A decade earlier, he obtained a $14M settlement for two other women against the same teacher and school district.

Ring said the sexual abuse cases are professionally satisfying but emotionally draining, so he varies his caseload by taking on personal injury cases such as wrongful death, product liability and civil rights.

He is currently representing two guardians in a wrongful death lawsuit against the Moreno Valley school district. Their nephew, Diego Stolz, was a 13-year old Landmark Middle School student who was bullied and killed by two other students in 2019. AB 2445 expands the rights of legal guardians to be able to seek justice in civil court when a child dies due to wrongful acts of others. The trial is scheduled to begin in October. Salcedo v. Moreno Valley Unified School District, RIC2003604 (Riverside Sup. Ct., filed Sept. 11 2020).

—Devon Belcher