A federal jury awarded $16 million to Vanessa Bryant, widow of Kobe Bryant, in a lawsuit against Los Angeles County over the alleged distribution of photos from the Los Angeles Lakers legend’s crash site, according to Alene Tchekmedyian of the Los Angeles Times.
Another plaintiff, Chris Chester, was awarded $15 million in the same lawsuit.
The payouts reportedly have the L.A. Sheriffs Department paying Bryant $2.5 million for emotional distress and $7.5 million for future suffering, while the L.A. County Fire Department owes her $1 million for past suffering and $5 million for future.
Part of the difference in payments was the jury reportedly finding the Sheriffs Department has a practice of sharing deceased people, while the Fire Department merely lacks sufficient training and policies.
Vanessa Bryant’s crash site photo lawsuit has been two years in the making
Bryant originally filed her suit in Sept. 2020, eight months after helicopter crash that killed her husband, 13-year-old daughter Gianna, Chester’s wife Sarah and daughter Payton and five others. Per a report from the Los Angeles Times in February, a group of deputies were found to have taken or shared graphic photos from the crash site.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva reportedly ordered the deputies to delete the photos, but otherwise kept the matter under wraps until a complaint was filed. L.A. County denied Bryant had any viable claim to emotional distress and attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed, but the case eventually reached the courtroom, where things got ugly and emotional.
Bryant took the stand on Aug. 10 and testified she still experiences panic attacks from having to deal with the existence and distribution of the photos, starting from the moment she learned of them, via CNN:
“I just remember not wanting to react cause the girls were in the room,” she testified, her voice rising with emotion. “I said, ‘I can’t do this.’ … And I bolted out of the house and I ran to the side of the house so the girls couldn’t see me. I wanted to run… down the block and just scream. I can’t escape my body. I can’t escape what I feel.”
Bryant’s lawyer, Luis Lee, reportedly played jurors video of an off-duty deputy drinking at a bar and showing photos to the bartender, who was shaking his head. Another image showed the two men laughing together. He also described firefighters looking at the phone photos two weeks later at an awards banquet, with a chart showing the spread of the photos to nearly 30 people.
