'It comes down to money’: Kobe Bryant crash photos case enters new phase after trial delay
In early February, a federal judge asked a question that continues to loom large in the legal battle between Kobe Bryant’s widow and Los Angeles County.
“What are you asking for?” the judge asked Vanessa Bryant’s attorney. “What are you going to ask the jury for?”
Her attorney, Luis Li, declined to give a dollar figure or even a price range.
He instead said the widow of the NBA legend wants “accountability” in her lawsuit against the county.
“That's what I don't understand,” U.S. District Judge John F. Walter replied.
Bryant is suing the county for invasion of privacy and negligence, accusing county fire and sheriff’s department employees of improperly taking and sharing photos of her husband’s and daughter’s dead bodies after they died in a helicopter crash in January 2020. According to her lawsuit, she is seeking damages in an amount to be determined at trial.
But now that the trial has been delayed until July 26, her lawsuit has entered a different phase. Walter wants her to be more specific. What does she really want?
The judge noted that in terms of “accountability,” neither he nor the jury could terminate the employment of the county employees who engaged in such conduct. Several such employees already were suspended or disciplined for their roles in this. In response to the controversy, the state of California even passed a new law that made it a crime for first responders to take unauthorized photos of dead people at the scene of an accident or crime.
“I really urge counsel to seriously consider settling this case,” the judge said in a pretrial video conference Feb. 4, according to the transcript. “I understand it's a – it's a difficult case to settle, but as we discussed, unfortunately there's nothing that the jury can do or this court can do to satisfy Mrs. Bryant's issue with respect to accountability. And it comes down to money.”
Paste BN Sports recently obtained a transcript of this proceeding, which provides additional details about this case and where it might be headed after she initially filed suit in September 2020. The case had been scheduled to go to trial Feb. 22, but Walter delayed it, citing a backlog of cases from the pandemic.
He ordered the parties to participate in further settlement talks by April 11 and said going to trial is “certainly not beneficial to the mental well-being of the plaintiffs in the case.”
The county’s outside counsel, Skip Miller, told the judge the county was open to settling the case and avoiding trial.
“We'd like to settle, too,” Miller said. “Believe me.”
Yet Bryant previously has not indicated she was interested in settling this case even after two other families who lost loved ones in the same crash each agreed to accept $1.25 million from the county to settle their own similar lawsuits over crash-scene photos. Bryant is one of two remaining plaintiffs who have not settled such lawsuits, the other being Chris Chester, whose wife and daughter died in the crash.
The judge asked Chester’s attorney the same question. What does he want from the jury?
“I would say a base of one million, and I don't know how high yet,” replied the attorney, Jerome Jackson.
There were other issues discussed at this conference.
Separate trials?
The county wants separate trials for the Bryant case and the Chester case even though they cover much of the same ground with similar allegations about county defendants improperly taking and sharing photos of bodies from the crash site.
“I don't think it would be fair to us for Mr. Chester's case to coattail and benefit from the celebrity of Ms. Bryant,” Miller told the judge.
Miller also said he didn’t think there was “any evidence of any pictures regarding” Chester’s wife and daughter.
The evidence gap
The county wanted to divide the case into two parts at trial, but the judge said he would not do that. Under the county’s proposal, it wanted the trial to first determine whether the photos were publicly disseminated under the standard required by law for a case like this. The county says they were not and that it would save time to decide this issue first before advancing to other issues.
The county’s argument is that the photos were not disseminated beyond county personnel except to a bartender two days after the crash. L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva testified in a pretrial deposition that an internal inquiry revealed the crash-scene images went to “28 devices” among sheriff’s department personnel.
They were not posted online and were deleted at the suggestion of Villanueva that same week.
The judge noted there was a “gap” in Bryant’s evidence because that evidence was deleted, leaving a lack of proof about what the photos showed and what was shared.
Bryant’s attorneys want to make up for this by having the judge instruct the jury that it may infer that the destroyed evidence was unfavorable to county. In response, the county noted that Villanueva’s suggestion to delete photos was aimed at trying to prevent the public dissemination of the photos – not about covering up wrongdoing by destroying evidence.
“I actually think that the most important element is that it appears that the sheriff's instruction or order to delete the photographs was successful in large part because it's now how many years after the fact and we haven't had … the deluge of these images that have been disseminated,” the judge said.
Bryant’s attorney Li then said his client has had to live in fear that such photos will one day resurface somewhere, adding to the emotional distress she claims to have suffered in this case. He said she has to “turn off her internet” and direct messaging functions online “so that she doesn't get sent images like this” of husband’s or daughter’s remains.
“Every day for the rest of her life she is going to have this fear that either the photographs are going to be exposed or that the children – she has the permanent fear that her children are going to be exposed to these photographs, perhaps on their graduation day or perhaps on, you know, Kobe Bryant's birthday,” Li said.
“But as each day passes, the probability of that happening lessens,” Judge Walter said.
“I just don't think that's correct,” Li told him, pointing out how old photos have resurfaced to harm other celebrities or politicians.
“I understand what you're saying,” the judge said. “I just don't think it's – I don't think it's the same situation.”
Li then said “if Mrs. Bryant learned that the county was firing all the people involved, she may have a completely different view of this matter. But the county chose not to do that.”
“And the jury is not going to be able to do that,” Judge Walter said.
“I understand that,” Li replied.
“So now we're going to be asking the jury for an amount of money because the county didn't do that,” the judge said.
'How do you quantify it?’
Bryant and other families who lost loved ones in the crash previously reached an undisclosed settlement with the operator of the doomed helicopter after they sued the company for wrongful deaths. Judge Walter questioned how Bryant and Chester could distinguish between the emotional distress they suffered over their loss of their family members and the emotional distress they say they suffered over the photos being taken and shared.
“How do you quantify it?” Walter asked.
The attorneys for Bryant and Chester said it will depend on the testimony and what the jury decides.
The judge indicated he would like it settled before that.
“In terms of the concept of accountability, I don't know what more that your respective clients believe that a jury is going to be able to give them,” Walter said. “Accountability in this context translates to an amount of money, and that's the question that I always ask plaintiffs' counsel, what are you going to ask for?”
“I understand that, Your Honor,” Li said. “I'm not in a position right now to say what Mrs. Bryant would ask for.”
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. E-mail: bschrotenb@usatoday.com