Los Angeles Partner Tony Sain and Associate Tori Bakken Win High-Profile Police ‘Positional Asphyxia’ Civil Rights Trial

Los Angeles, Calif. (May 2, 2024) - Los Angeles Partner Tony M. Sain, with Associate Tori Bakken and law and motion Partner Abigail McLaughlin, recently secured a defense jury verdict in a restraint-related wrongful death civil rights case on behalf of a law enforcement agency in Southern California.

The case, which arose in the wake of George Floyd’s death, featured allegations that Caucasian police officers had caused a middle-aged Black man experiencing mental illness to die by positional asphyxia through a combination of prone restraint and use of the WRAP full-body restraint harness.

However, after defeating plaintiffs’ Monell municipal liability claims by a pre-trial motion, Mr. Sain and Ms. Bakken were able to prove to the diverse federal jury that, not only were all the officers’ restraint force efforts reasonable under standard police training when dealing with a reportedly violent and resistive 5150 subject, but that the video evidence and the non-party forensic autopsy and paramedic observations showed that the subject never asphyxiated, and that he instead died due to physiological strain caused by stress-induced and exertion-exacerbated biochemical surges that literally stopped his heart while he was in the back of the paramedics’ ambulance. After a ten-day trial against two of the most prominent plaintiffs’ attorneys in the civil rights field - who had asked the jury for an aggregate of $49.5 million in damages - the eight-person jury returned a unanimous verdict finding reasonable force/restraint and no causation of death.

Mr. Sain is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Lewis Brisbois, a Vice Chair of the General Liability Practice and Co-Chair of its Civil Rights & Police Litigation Defense Task Force, and a member of the National Trial and Appellate Practices. He focuses his practice on high exposure, high-stakes, high-profile matters in a wide variety of catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases across a number of practice areas, including personal injury, tort litigation, as well as police civil rights and public entity defense.

Ms. Bakken is a senior associate in the Los Angeles office of Lewis Brisbois and a member of the General Liability Practice and its Civil Rights & Police Litigation Defense Task Force. Ms. Bakken has successfully handled numerous public entity/law enforcement defense matters, consistently achieving positive outcomes for her clients. A rising star at trial, Ms. Bakken regularly outmaneuvers trial attorneys with decades more experience; and she is fast developing renown as one of the most effective cross-examiners of her generation.

Ms. McLaughlin is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Lewis Brisbois and a member of the General Liability Practice and its Civil Rights & Police Litigation Defense Task Force, as well as the Appellate Practice. Ms. McLaughlin is a law and motion and appellate advocacy specialist who has been instrumental in helping our clients routinely secure defense-favorable motion and appeal outcomes.

For more information about this verdict, contact the attorneys. Visit our Civil Rights & Police Litigation Defense Task Force and General Liability Practice pages to learn more about Lewis Brisbois' capabilities in this area.