The jury granted Vanessa Bryant’s $16 million lawsuit over the distribution of photos of bodies from the helicopter crash that killed her husband, Kobe Bryant, and daughter, Gianna, along with seven other people. Chris Chester, whose wife Sarah, 45, and daughter Payton, 13, were among those killed in the crash and who joined the lawsuit, was awarded $15 million.
On a foggy Sunday morning in January 2020, Kobe Bryant, a 41-year-old United States professional basketball player, and eight others flew in from Orange County. The trip was made to attend a youth basketball tournament in the northern suburbs of Los Angeles. But then the pilot got disoriented in the clouds. The helicopter crashed into a hill near Calabasas, California. Everyone on board was killed, including Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers star whose popularity in Southern California far surpassed his achievements in US basketball tournaments.
As news of the crash and the identities of the victims spread around the world, law enforcement officers, investigators, journalists, and Bryant’s fans headed to the scene of the extreme crash. The New York Times reported Wednesday that Bryant’s wife alleged in her lawsuit that in the first hours after the crash, Los Angeles County firefighters and sheriff’s deputies were allowed to take close-up photos of human remains at the crash site. This is deemed unnecessary. The images taken included the bodies of Kobe and Gianna Bryant, and the photos were later shared among sheriff’s deputies and firefighters.
In court, Vanessa Bryant said days after an emotional public memorial to the man she’d been married to for nearly two decades, she was alerted to the Los Angeles Times report. The report said that one of the deputies, Joey Cruz, had shown the photo to a bartender and another barman, who then lodged a complaint with the sheriff’s department.
“I felt like I wanted to run away and scream. But I can’t run away. I can’t escape from my body,” said Bryant’s wife while testifying in court. Another woman, a relative of some of the accident victims, testified that a Fire Department official showed several photos at a gala where communications staff were receiving awards.
In the lawsuit, Bryant accused the county of negligence and violating its constitutional right to privacy. His attorneys argued that orders from Fire Department and Sheriff’s Department officials to remove the images after the investigation had begun amounted to destruction of evidence and a cover-up.
Vanessa Bryant and Chester are seeking damages for the emotional distress caused by concerns that the photos could appear publicly on the internet at any time. The jury’s verdict came after a nearly two-week trial that in some ways became a typical Los Angeles celebrity legal spectacle.
