A federal jury has awarded $11.8 million to a Los Angeles Dodgers fan who was blinded by a police projectile during a World Series celebration downtown in 2020.
The verdict reached Thursday closed what has been a nearly six-year legal battle by Isaac Castellanos after he permanently lost vision in one eye when LAPD officers fired less-lethal weapons into a crowd where he was standing and hit him in the face.
Castellanos sued, alleging excessive force. His attorneys have pushed to triple the jury award under a state law that allows for increased damages in such cases.
As with most jury awards, the amount will probably be appealed and any potential settlement would still need approval from city leaders.
At the time of the incident, Castellanos was a 22-year-old Cal State Long Beach student. He said he was peacefully celebrating the Dodgers’ win near Crypto.com Arena about 1 a.m. on Oct. 28, 2020, when officers moved in on the crowd.
LAPD officials said the officers were responding to violent groups that were vandalizing and breaking into downtown businesses. Castellanos and others have accused the department of overreacting to the situation, which they maintain was largely peaceful.
Beyond the emotional toll, losing partial vision has robbed Castellanos of a potentially lucrative career in esports, according to Pedram Esfandiary, one of his attorneys.
An avid gamer, he had won $20,000 at a gaming competition only months before the incident, his attorneys said.
Castellanos previously told The Times that he and his friends had not broken any laws and that he was not posing a threat to officers when he was struck. He also said he had not heard police give an order to disperse before officers rushed in on people with their projectile launchers drawn.
After six days of testimony and evidence, the jury deliberated for less than two hours before coming back with the verdict.
Esfandiary said evidence showed that Castellanos was struck by a 37-mm “skip trace” launcher, which fires hard-foam projectiles designed to ricochet off the ground and strike protesters in the lower body in an effort to disperse them.
Under LAPD policy, the weapons are supposed to be used at close range, but Castellanos’ attorneys showed evidence that the rounds were fired from roughly 145 feet away, enough distance to cause the projectile to rise to eye level.
The lawyer said he hoped the massive verdict would serve as a wake-up call for the department and the city as more lawsuits pile up over less-lethal weapons.
“This was just another nail in that coffin that this has to stop,” he said.
Since 2020, the department has been forced to limit the use of some projectile launchers
A federal judge issued an injunction in January against the use of 40-mm launchers, but the LAPD has deployed other types of crowd control weapons in subsequent protests.
At protests in downtown over the Trump administration’s immigration policies, LAPD officers deployed tear gas and fired nearly 1,400 less-lethal rounds over a six-day period that began June 9, according to a report posted to the department’s website.
Police officials said in the report that officers responded with force after members of the crowd threw rocks, bottles, fireworks and Molotov cocktails at police and burned several vehicles.
Officials have promised thorough investigations of all uses of force.
