Kobe Bryant Widow Fights Mental Evaluation in Crash Photo Suit

Kobe Bryant’s widow asked a federal court to deny Los Angeles County’s request that she undergo a psychiatric evaluation in a lawsuit seeking damages for emotional distress stemming from sheriff’s deputies taking photographs of the helicopter crash site where her husband and daughter were killed.

“Rather than take accountability for conduct the Sheriff himself has called ‘wildly inappropriate’ and ‘disgusting,’ the county has chosen to pull out all the stops to make the case as painful as possible for the victims in the hopes that they give up and go away,” attorneys for Vanessa Bryant said Oct. 22 in a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The requested involuntary psychiatric examinations of Bryant and Christopher Chester, the other remaining plaintiff who has not settled claims with the county, “would cause plaintiffs immense pain” and would serve no purpose because the distress issue is “within the province of a lay jury,” Bryant told Judge John F. Walter.

“There is no reason to think a jury could not understand and measure the additional emotional distress that naturally flows from defendants’
gross misconduct,” Bryant said.

“While the county now claims that plaintiffs were not harmed when defendants showed off photos of their dead family members like a trophy or party trick, Sheriff Villanueva himself has acknowledged that his deputies’ conduct would be upsetting to the family of the deceased,” Bryant said.

Bryant also asked the court to deny the county’s request that her children—ages 5, 10, and 13—"provide a ‘detailed account’ of their distress.”

The complaint alleges that several sheriff’s deputies at the crash site used their cell phones to take pictures of the crash victims “for their own personal gratification.”

The deputies then displayed the images to their colleagues, and one deputy shared “photos of the victims to try to impress a woman at a bar,” the complaint alleges. A bartender overheard the interaction and filed a written complaint with the sheriff’s department, according to the complaint.

The complaint alleges that Sheriff Alex Villanueva “did not inform the families, initiate an investigation, or inspect the deputies’ phones to determine whether and how the photos had been shared. He instead directed a cover-up, summoning the deputies to the Lost Hills station and telling them that, if they deleted the photos, they would face no discipline.”

Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven other people were killed in the Jan. 26, 2020, accident when a Sikorsky S-76B helicopter, flying in cloudy conditions, crashed into a hillside near Calabasas, Calif. Chester’s wife and daughter were also killed in the crash.

Munger Tolles & Olson LLP represents Bryant. Miller Barondess LLP represents the county.

The case is Bryant v. County of Los Angeles, C.D. Cal., No. 20-cv-09582, 10/22/21.