Jury orders LA County to pay $31 million in Kobe Bryant crash photo sharing case
LOS ANGELES — A jury Wednesday ordered Los Angeles County to pay Vanessa Bryant, widow of Lakers star Kobe Bryant, and another man $31 million in damages for the graphic photos sheriff’s deputies and firefighters took at the scene of the 2020 helicopter crash that killed Bryant, his daughter, and seven others.
In reaching the verdict after only a few hours of deliberations, jurors made clear they had been persuaded by Bryant and Chris Chester, who 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.
“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.
