Rodney King, having won $3.8 million from the city for his 1991 beating, is now going after the officers who delivered the blows.
A jury awarded the motorist $3,816,535.45 in compensatory damages Tuesday. In the next phase of the case, starting Thursday, the jury will decide whether 14 defendants - including the police officers who beat King, bystander officers and former Police Chief Daryl Gates - should be made to pay punitive damages.The verdict Tuesday was far below the $15 million King sought but well above the $800,000 that city attorneys said during the trial was a fair sum.
Punitive damages, which are meant to punish and deter wrongdoing, are often vastly larger than compensatory damages, which cover a victim's medical bills, pain and suffering and loss of future earnings.
King's lawyer, Milton Grimes, said the jury could add enough to bring the total up to the $15 million wanted.
"I still believe that Rodney King's psychic damages and loss of enjoyment of life exceeds any other case we have seen from police brutality, and that's why we asked for $15 million," Grimes said.
The city remained calm after the verdict, which came two years after the acquittal of four officers on state charges touched off riots that claimed 55 lives.
Joseph Duff, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the amount awarded was "a measure of the depth of pain and suffering and the understanding that there is permanent injury to him."
"I really hope that we can now close the book on the entire Rodney King tragedy" and focus attention on racism, jobs, education and other issues vital to black residents, said John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League.
King, 29, was not in the courtroom for the verdict. But his lawyer said the former construction worker and ex-convict "was not disappointed" with the amount.
"We think that this is a satisfactory result," said City Attorney James Hahn.
The verdict came on the fourth day of deliberations by a multiracial jury.
King, who is black, asserted in the three-week civil trial that white officers beat him after a traffic stop because of his race. In closing arguments, King's lawyers elevated him to the stature of such civil rights heroes as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X.
Experts testifying for King said he had suffered permanent brain damage. City lawyers sought to minimize King's injuries, eliciting testimony about his drug and alcohol use and a previous robbery conviction.
King himself gave his most graphic account of the beating.
"I felt like I had been raped," he testified. "I felt like I had lost half of my face. . . . I could hear my bones crunching every time the baton hit me. It sounded like throwing an egg and hearing the shell crack."
He also recalled his assailants yelling racial epithets - a point disputed in the two previous criminal trials.
The lawsuit proceeded to trial only after the city admitted liability in the beating and left it to a jury to decide how much King should get in compensatory damages. The city cannot be directly sued for punitive damages.
Lawyers for Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell - the two officers who were ultimately convicted in federal court last year of violating King's civil rights - have said their clients are broke. Both men are serving 21/2-year prison sentences.