Los Angeles – On Wednesday, a jury ordered Los Angeles County to pay Vanessa Bryant, widow of Lakers star Kobe Bryant, and another man $21 million in damages for the graphic photos sheriff’s deputies and firefighters took of the 2020 helicopter crash scene that killed Bryant, his daughter, and seven others.
The jury reached the verdict in just a few hours. Vanessa Bryant and Chris Chester argued that illicit photos of the crash victims’ bodies had violated their right to privacy and inflicted emotional distress. Chester lost his wife, Sarah, and daughter, Payton, in the crash according to the Los Angeles Times.
“We’re not here because of an accident,” Bryant’s attorney Craig Lavoie told jurors during his closing arguments Tuesday, on what would have been Kobe Bryant’s 44th birthday. “We’re here because of intentional conduct. Intentional conduct by those who were charged with protecting the dignity of Sarah and Payton, and Kobe and Gianna.”
Throughout the 11-day trial, that took place in federal court, lawyers for Bryant and Chester documented how the photos spread: They were flashed from a sheriff’s deputy’s phone screen to a bartender in Norwalk. They were shown to firefighters and their spouses during an awards gala at a hotel in Universal City in what amounted, one witness said, to a “party trick.” They were passed from one deputy to another as the pair played video games.
Attorneys for Bryant and Chester argued that it will never be known how far the images were spread because the county did not thoroughly investigate. It wasn’t until most of the involved deputies had received new phones that officials hired a firm to conduct a forensic examination of employee devices.
