A lawyer for Kobe Bryant’s widow told a jury on Wednesday that an institutional “culture of callousness” encouraged Los Angeles County deputies and firefighters to take and post pictures of the remains of Kobe Bryant and other victims of the 2020 helicopter crash that killed the Lakers star, his daughter, 13, and seven other people.
In his opening remarks to the jury in Vanessa Bryant’s invasion of privacy trial against the county in U.S. District Court, Luis Li explained that the cell-phone pictures taken at the accident site by a deputy and a fire captain were “visual gossip” viewed “for a chuckle,” and had no official function.
Deputies who were playing video games shared them, according to Li. They were frequently sent to those who had no business receiving them.
When first responders attempted to convey information at the chaotic, hazardous, and difficult-to-reach collision site in the Calabasas hills west of Los Angeles, an attorney for the county justified the use of images as a vital tool.
Site photography is crucial, according to county attorney J. Mira Hashmall.
Vanessa Bryant regularly sobbed during her attorney’s presentation. Minutes later, during a break, she was still wiping tears from her eyes.
Li said before the jury that knowing of the images’ dissemination one month after the accident came via the Los Angeles Times rather than the county, which added to her already excruciating pain.
“The saddest day of Vanessa Bryant’s life was January 26, 2020. The county really worsened it, “said Li. “They rubbed salt into an open wound with their hands.”
Li showed the surveillance footage to the jury, which showed a sheriff’s officer drinking at a pub while off duty and displaying the bartender the pictures while shaking his head in disbelief.
The attorney then displayed a picture of the guys smiling together in the future. At an awards dinner two weeks later, Li recalled firemen glancing at the phone pictures, and she showed the judges an interactive chart showing how they had spread to over 30 individuals.
Vanessa Bryant “will be haunted by what they did forever,” according to Li, who claimed that the county failed to conduct a thorough investigation to ensure that every copy of the photo was accounted for.
She expressed concern that they may surface in the future and her living children may see them online.
The absence of the images for more than two years, according to Hashmall, demonstrated that the sheriff’s department and the fire department’s officials performed their duties, she told the jury during the defense’s opening statement.
“No, they are not online. They don’t appear in the media.
The litigants themselves have never ever seen them, “added Hashmall. Added she, “That wasn’t a mistake. That depends on how careful they were.”
Instead of conducting a drawn-out formal investigation that may further injure the families, sheriff Alex Villanueva and department officials swiftly summoned in all individuals implicated and ordered them to erase the images.
He chose what, in his opinion, was the only course of action, Hashmall stated. He believed that every second counted.
Hashmall explained to the jury that Li only had the video of the bartender because the Sheriff’s Department had obtained it the same day they received a complaint from a different patron who saw the photo sharing.
She claimed that the video had been deceptively edited to appear as though the men were laughing together.
She said that the deputy was having emotional problems as a result of finding it difficult to cope with the collision scene and that he was confiding in the bartender since she was a longtime acquaintance.
She said, “He took out his phone, and it shouldn’t have occurred.” He “showed the images in a slip, in a moment of weakness, and he has regretted it every day of his life.”
The defence lawyer pleaded with the jury to ignore the suffering of the plaintiffs and concentrate on the case at hand.
There is no denying the suffering these families have endured, she added. “It’s beyond words. But the loss from the collision is not the focus of this lawsuit. It has to do with the images.”
The complaint wants unspecified millions of dollars, and Chris Chester, whose wife Sara and daughter Payton were also killed in the collision, is one of the plaintiffs.
The county already agreed to pay $2.5 million to resolve a complaint identical to this one filed by two families whose members perished in the disaster on January 26, 2020. Bryant and Chester turned down an agreement.
When their rented chopper crashed in the mist, Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, along with other parents and players, were travelling to a girls basketball tournament. Federal safety experts attributed the accident to pilot error.