Vanessa Bryant’s attorneys filed a motion Monday in her lawsuit over photos of the helicopter crash scene taken by Los Angeles County sheriff deputies. If granted, it would require jurors to assume the images were shared by the wider public because the evidence was destroyed.
The motion for penalties for stripping of evidence is the latest move in the lawsuit of Kobe Bryant’s widow, for severe emotional distress, after learning that officers and firefighters shared horrifying footage from the scene of the accident where her husband, his daughter Gianna and seven other people died, in January 2020. The photos were shared internally and also by an agent who showed his cell phone in a Norwalk bar and, in addition, by a fire captain who showed them from his phone, at a cocktail party during an awards ceremony.
A judge’s decision in favor of the motion could thwart the county’s efforts to dismiss the case before trial.
Luis Li, Bryant’s lead attorney, argued that after learning of a citizen complaint on January 29 about the incident at the bar, Sheriff Alex Villanueva ordered all officers with images of the Calabasas accident to delete them immediately. .
An investigation by the Los Angeles Times in March revealed that agents had shared the grim photos from the scene. Bryant’s attorneys have argued that because county agencies did not order their employees to retain their phone contents, the widow was deprived of the ability to know with whom the images were shared before the devices were wiped. .
County attorneys acknowledged that officers and three fire captains shared images from the crash site.
Skip Miller, a county attorney, said that by ordering the immediate removal of the images, Villanueva sought to keep a promise he had made to Vanessa Bryant that the photos would not be released to the public. In a recent statement in the case, Bryant recalled telling Villanueva: “If you can’t get my husband and daughter back, make sure no one takes pictures of them. Secure the area ”.
In court documents, Miller noted that Bryant’s attorneys want an “adverse inference” at trial, and that the missing evidence would have shown “increased electronic dissemination” of the images. In addition, it maintains that Vanessa Bryant could not suffer severe distress from photos that she never saw and that were never publicly shared because they were deleted. County attorneys hope the case will be dismissed before trial if they can show that the general public never saw such photos.
Bryant’s advocates have argued that the county did not attempt to preserve the software on the cell phones involved after learning of the citizen complaint, and they have said in court documents that the sheriff’s captain who expressed concern about the order to remove the material was degraded.
County attorneys responded by alleging that Bryant hopes to punish the county for carrying out his wish. “While the county continues to feel the deepest empathy for Ms. Bryant’s pain, her attorneys’ request for penalties is an attempt to distract from the fact that none of the routine investigation photos taken by county employees has been publicly disclosed, “Miller said in a statement sent to The Times.
But Bryant’s attorney has noted in court documents that the images were not routinely shared and were received by people outside the chain of command.
Attorneys for Christopher Chester, who filed a lawsuit reflecting Vanessa Bryant’s legal action, also joined the motion. Chester lost his wife, Sarah, and their 13-year-old daughter, Payton, in the Calabasas accident.
The possible trial for the case would be next February. In recent weeks, federal judge Charles F. Eick ruled that the county’s motion to force Bryant to undergo an independent medical evaluation was inopportune, given the date of the process.
The decision marked another victory for Bryant’s legal team, which also persuaded the magistrate to allow them to remove the sheriff and the county fire marshal. But county attorneys are also looking for Bryant’s mental health records to determine if he had any pre-existing emotional stress conditions.
The county has already settled the lawsuits of Matthew Mauser for $ 1.25 million and brothers JJ Altobelli and Alexis Altobelli for another $ 1.25 million. Mauser’s wife, Christine, and the Altobelli’s mother, father and younger sister – Keri, John and Alyssa – perished in the accident.
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