According to a court filing on Tuesday, Los Angeles County has agreed to pay Vanessa Bryant and three of her daughters nearly $30 million to settle a lawsuit and possible claims over the sharing of graphic photos of the January 2020 helicopter crash that killed Bryant’s basketball star husband Kobe Bryant and one of their daughters. In August, a jury gave Vanessa Bryant $15 million, and the settlement also includes money to settle any possible claims from her daughters.
Today marks the successful culmination of Mrs. Bryant’s courageous battle to hold accountable those who engaged in this grotesque conduct,
Luis Li, Vanessa Bryant’s lawyer, said in a statement.
She fought for her husband, her daughter, and all those in the community whose deceased family were treated with similar disrespect. We hope her victory at trial and this settlement will put an end to this practice.
On January 26, 2020, Kobe Bryant, 41, and his daughter Gianna Bryant, 13, were in a helicopter with seven other people when it crashed in the fog outside Los Angeles, killing everyone on board. Soon after, Vanessa Bryant found out that some people who worked for the county’s fire and sheriff’s departments had shown her disturbing photos of the crash victims’ bodies. She sued for negligence and invasion of privacy in September 2020. She won at trial in August, giving some of Los Angeles’ most powerful institutions a rare and expensive public scolding.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to pay Bryant’s family $28.85 million to settle Bryant’s lawsuit and any possible future claims by Vanessa Bryant and her three daughters, Natalia, 20, Bianka, 6, and Capri, 3. In August, a jury gave Bryant $16 million, but because of a mistake, that amount was later cut by $1 million.
Mira Hashmall, the lead trial attorney for Los Angeles County in Vanessa Bryant’s case, said in a statement that the settlement was “fair and reasonable” and that all lawsuits involving the crash and the county had been settled.
We hope Ms. Bryant and her children continue to heal from their loss,
Hashmall said.
Kobe Bryant was a star for the Los Angeles Lakers for 20 years before he retired in 2016. On the day of the crash, he was on his way to coach Gianna’s basketball team at his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif. The pilot, Ara Zobayan, got lost in the clouds and crashed the helicopter into a hill near Calabasas, California, killing everyone on board.
In a deposition for her lawsuit, Vanessa Bryant said that Rob Pelinka, the Lakers general manager and Kobe Bryant’s former agent, drove her later that morning to a Malibu sheriff’s station near the crash scene.
Alex Villanueva, who was the sheriff of Los Angeles County at the time, told Bryant about the deaths and asked what he could do to help, she said.
And I said: ‘If you can’t bring my husband and baby back, please make sure that no one takes photographs of them. Please secure the area,’
Vanessa Bryant said during the deposition.
And he said: ‘I will.’ And I said: ‘No, I need you to get on the phone right now and I need you to make sure you secure the area.’
Vanessa Bryant said in court that she found out that a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy had shown photos of the crash at a bar from a Los Angeles Times article. Bryant said that the photos made the tragedy even worse.
I live in fear of my daughters being on social media and these popping up,
Vanessa Bryant testified.
Most of the people who saw the pictures were from the sheriff’s and fire departments in Los Angeles County.
Lawyers for the county admitted that the photos were taken and shared, but they said that they didn’t get out to the public because they were told to delete them right away.
At the trial, the jury also gave $15 million to Chris Chester, who joined the lawsuit because his wife Sarah, who was 45, and his daughter Payton, who was 13, died in the crash. For any future claims, Los Angeles County agreed to pay the Chester family an extra $4.95 million.
In October 2021, two other families each paid the county $1.25 million to settle with them about the photos.
Li had said before that Vanessa Bryant would give the money from the lawsuit to her Kobe and Gianna Bryant-honoring Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation.
