Neil Gehlawat

The Monday Diego Returned to School

Diego Stolz's family had reported an earlier attack and asked his middle school for protection. Administrators said video would be reviewed and the students involved would be suspended. On Monday morning, the boys were still on campus.

Gehlawat's civil-rights work turns on objective records: surveillance video, body-camera footage, ballistics and trajectory evidence, restraint hardware, dispatch information, prior complaints, and agency files. He uses those materials to test whether the account offered by a school district, police agency, or county fits the physical and documentary evidence — and when the two diverge, the record speaks.

Diego was thirteen, an eighth-grader at a Moreno Valley middle school who had lived with his aunt and uncle since the death of his parents. His family said bullying had followed him through seventh grade and into the new school year, and that his aunt repeatedly sought help from administrators.

After an attack during the week before September 16, 2019, an administrator told the family that security footage would be reviewed and the students would be removed. When Diego returned on Monday, two boys approached him in the courtyard. One struck him from behind. Diego fell backward into a concrete pillar, and the boys continued hitting him after he fell. He remained on life support for nine days before he died.

Neil Gehlawat and Dave Ring represented Diego's guardians. Their case developed the family's prior reports, the earlier attack, the surveillance video, the identities of the students involved, the administrator's assurances, and the protective measures available before Diego returned to campus.

The claim examined whether administrators had received enough warning to use supervision, separation, discipline, parent contact, and a safety plan before the next school day. Moreno Valley Unified School District agreed to a $27 million resolution in 2023 — among the largest school-bullying settlements in the nation's history. Gehlawat said, "His death was entirely preventable if administrators at his middle school had done their job."

Mely Corado at Trader Joe's

Melyda "Mely" Corado was twenty-seven and worked as an assistant manager at the Trader Joe's in Silver Lake. On July 21, 2018, a fleeing suspect ran toward the store while exchanging gunfire with Los Angeles police. Officers fired eight rounds near the entrance. One police bullet struck Corado inside the crowded market and killed her.

Gehlawat and John Taylor represented her family. They obtained raw body-camera footage, autopsy material, ballistics and trajectory evidence, tactical training records, officer positions, the store layout, and the locations of customers and employees.

The case focused on firearms training requiring an officer to account for the area behind and around an intended target before firing. The evidence allowed the family to examine the seconds before the shot as a sequence of positions, sight lines, and decisions — each one recoverable, each one testable.

The Los Angeles City Council approved a $9.5 million settlement in August 2024, resolving the family's claim that officers should not have fired toward a busy grocery store without a sufficiently clear field of fire.

"Watch This" on a Dead-End Street

Kurt Reinhold was forty-two, unhoused, and living with schizoaffective disorder. On September 23, 2020, Orange County sheriff's deputies assigned to a homeless-outreach team encountered him in San Clemente.

Recorded comments captured the beginning of the stop. “Watch this, he’s going to jaywalk,” one deputy said. His partner answered, “Don’t make case law.” A struggle followed. The deputies said Reinhold reached for a gun; Reinhold was unarmed. One deputy fired twice and killed him.

Gehlawat and the trial team examined the gun-grab account against the deputy's Level III duty holster, which had three safeguards designed to retain the weapon. The plaintiffs developed biomechanical and hardware evidence concerning the hand position, movement, and sequence required to defeat those safeguards — engineering brought to bear on a claim about a fraction of a second.

They also set the recorded initiation of the stop beside the stated purpose of the homeless-outreach assignment: connecting vulnerable people with services and reducing escalation. Orange County approved a $7.5 million settlement in May 2023.

David Sal Silva near Kern Medical Center

David Sal Silva was thirty-three and a father of four. In May 2013, deputies found him near Kern Medical Center after a report concerning an intoxicated man. Seven sheriff's deputies and two California Highway Patrol officers participated in the encounter.

Bystander video showed officers striking and restraining Silva while he was on the ground. His family alleged that he was compressed face-down, hogtied, and deprived of air. He died during the restraint.

Gehlawat joined the family's legal team. The case drew on eyewitness recordings, officer accounts, restraint evidence, medical records, dispatch information, and agency files. Deputies had temporarily seized witnesses' phones, and the sheriff-coroner structure placed the death investigation within the same county system whose deputies were involved.

Discovery examined the handling of the recordings, the order and duration of the restraint, the medical explanation for Silva's death, and the county's investigation of itself. Kern County paid $3.4 million in 2016.

Three Complaints before the Jail Assault

In 2018, a woman incarcerated in the Santa Barbara County Jail sought help from discharge planner Salvador Vargas. She later alleged that Vargas took her to an unmonitored area and sexually assaulted her. Vargas eventually pleaded guilty to a felony sexual offense and received a prison sentence.

Gehlawat and John Taylor represented the woman as Jane Doe. Three women had previously complained about Vargas. The plaintiffs alleged that the investigations were incomplete and that one report had been ordered disregarded or buried, while Vargas retained access to incarcerated women.

The municipal-liability claim connected the later assault to prior notice and repeated inaction. Counsel examined what the jail investigated, whom it interviewed, whether evidence was preserved, what discipline followed, and why Vargas kept unsupervised access after earlier complaints.

The county sought summary judgment. The district judge found sufficient evidence for a jury to consider whether repeated inaction had allowed Vargas's conduct to continue. The case resolved in September 2024, shortly before jury selection, with Santa Barbara County agreeing to pay Jane Doe $2 million. Her identity remained protected throughout.

The 2026–2027 Revival Window

California Assembly Bill 250 took effect in 2026 and opened a two-year filing window through December 31, 2027, for certain otherwise time-barred adult sexual-assault claims. It also extends specified claims against private entities where a cover-up is alleged.

In May 2026, Gehlawat published guidance explaining how the statute can reopen certain adult-survivor claims and cover-up theories against private entities. Screening begins with the survivor's age when the abuse occurred, the timing of the claim, the proposed defendant, any prior disposition, and evidence that the proposed defendant ignored, concealed, or refused to address earlier misconduct.

The provision does not revive claims against public entities, reopen finally adjudicated or settled matters, or make every older claim eligible. The identity of the perpetrator, the timing, the defendant, the prior disposition, and evidence concerning coordinated concealment remain material to whether a claim falls within the statute. For survivors weighing whether the window applies to them, that screening framework turns a dense statute into a set of answerable questions.

Education and Practice

Gehlawat graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Texas School of Law. He was admitted to the California bar on May 21, 2013, and speaks English, Hindi, and Punjabi. After handling civil-rights matters in Kern County and elsewhere, he joined Taylor & Ring in 2020 and became a partner.

His practice includes police misconduct, sexual-abuse litigation involving schools and custodial settings, school safety, wrongful death, catastrophic injury, and appellate work. His teaching and writing address federal civil-rights practice, access to police video, jury selection, wrongful-death damages, cross-examination of defense medical experts, and the 2026 revival window for certain older sexual-assault claims. Across each case runs the same discipline that anchored Diego's: the record, fully developed, tells the truth about what the defendant knew and when it knew it.