Jury awards over $60M after security guard smashed glass on man’s head at Texas Live!
Abel Rodriguez, a veteran and former police officer, suffered severe brain injuries after a security guard at a Texas Live! bar assaulted him, according to a lawsuit.
Rodriguez, who has PTSD, was encouraged to socialize by his counselor. On Sept. 9, 2018, the 54-year-old man went out to the entertainment complex in Arlington for a night that led to him suffering for many years, his wife and attorneys said.
Abel and his wife, Cynthia Rodriguez, were awarded over $60 million in damages by a Tarrant County jury on Tuesday, Nov. 26. The trial verdict in the lawsuit came after a six-year wait for the couple.
The total judgment amount of $60,650,000 includes exemplary damages of $50 million against Texas Live!, $5 million against Inner Parish Security Corporation and $500,000 against the security guard, Hasan Perryman, according to court documents.
A Texas Live! representative said in a statement that, “Texas Live! is committed to providing a safe environment for its millions of visitors each year. The isolated incident occurred in 2018 between an individual and a representative of a third-party security company and is in the process of being appealed.”
Night of the incident
Abel, Cynthia and their two friends met at Texas Live!, at 1650 E. Randol Mill Road in Arlington. After dinner they went to the PBR bar located inside the Texas Live! complex.
PBR customers can purchase souvenir beer mugs, but they have to leave their glass mugs outside the bar on a table. When the group of friends were leaving, they noticed a big stack of glasses at a table and they asked the bouncer, Perryman, “What do you do with these glasses at the end of the day?” Perryman said that he takes them home and gives them to friends and family, according to the suit.
After what they remember to be a friendly conversation, Abel took one of the glasses and left the bar to get pizza from the food court, the couple’s lead attorney Brian Butcher said in an interview with Star-Telegram.
They were ordering pizza when the security guard came up and took the glass off the table, he said.
When Abel approached the guard, Perryman turned around and shoved him violently onto the ground, Butcher said. Perryman then raised the heavy glass mug that he had just taken off the table and when Abel ducked his head, Perryman smashed the glass on the back of his head at the base of his skull, the attorney said. It required layers of stitches to sew the wound up.
Medical personnel accidentally left several large pieces of glass in Abel’s head, between his scalp and his skull, which he had in his head for a year until they needed to be surgically removed, Butcher said.
The impact of the glass smashing against his head caused a brain injury and Abel suffered a concussion and cognitive deficits that continue to this day, Butcher said.
Cynthia witnessed the brutal attack, she told the Star-Telegram. “It all happened so fast,” she said.
“We were just shocked — we never expected anything like this to happen,” Cynthia said.
She said people gathered around, and some said they could be a witness but there was so much commotion that she did not collect their information, assuming that the facility would have video surveillance.
Perryman also punched her husband in the eye, Cynthia said.
A whole year later, Abel kept saying he had a headache, and he could feel something in the back of his head, she said. That is when they decided to contact an attorney.
“It was very stressful, because nobody seemed to take responsibility for it happening — the security company or Texas Live!,” Cynthia said. “Nobody from the companies reached out to us to apologize, and I guess that was the most upsetting.”
“He was living with and thinking well, maybe it was my fault, but it wasn’t. He knew he didn’t throw a punch, he knew that he didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.
Butcher and other attorneys from the Noteboom Law Firm represented Cynthia and Abel.
“I’m so so thankful I chose their firm, because he was like a god send to us,” Cynthia said.
Cynthia hopes that with the verdict and everything that they have gone through, Texas Live! would consider better screening of its security guards.
“My husband still has pains in his head from headaches, which could be from nerve damage, because there were two layers of stitches in his head, in his skull, and it probably went down so deep that he could have nerve damage for the rest of his life,” she said.
Cynthia said she wants to be proactive and help her husband going forward.
“In this day and age, people aren’t treated with kindness and grace, and people need to be treated better, and I just hope they change the way they do things in order for this not to happen to another person,” she said.
“So many people visit that place, somebody could have gotten killed, and that could have been my husband,” Cynthia said.
Companies negligent in hiring guard, attorney says
Texas Live! and Inner Parish not only were negligent in allowing Perryman to be employed as a security guard there, but they also engaged in a cover-up of what he did, Butcher said.
There is clear evidence that there was video surveillance of what happened, and the companies hid that evidence from the jury, according to Butcher.
“Texas Live! and the security company that they hired actually used my client’s PTSD against him, and they chose to make the argument that all of his issues were issues related to his war experiences, PTSD, and not to a traumatic brain injury,” Butcher said.
Perryman had a felony battery conviction in Chicago for beating a meter maid in the face for giving him a parking ticket, Butcher said. He was hired without being properly screened and the companies did not have an application in his employee file, the attorney said.
“Texas law mandates that a person with a felony conviction within the last 10 years is not allowed to work as a security guard,” Butcher said. “Perryman was employed despite the fact that he had, five years previously.”
No criminal charges were filed against Perryman in connection with the assault on Abel, according to his attorneys.
The assault was a severe setback in Abel’s life. He was isolated and his depression and anxiety became worse, and all of the symptoms of PTSD that he was experiencing before got worse, Butcher said.
“We overcame their refusal to take responsibility by explaining to the jury the facts of the case and letting the jury decide the truth,” Butcher said. “The case was a vindication of truth, a vindication of Abel Rodriguez.”
He also sees the verdict as a repudiation of the defense tactics in the case and dragging Abel Rodriguez’s name through the dirt for years, he said.
“They’re not just clients, they’re my friends, and they are profoundly good people who suffered something horrible that should have never happened,” Butcher said. “I’m happy for them that they were able to tell their story to 12 neutral people from the community, and that all 12 of the people who listened to their story believed them and supported them.”
This story was originally published November 29, 2024 at 9:15 AM.