LOS ANGELES (AP) — An institutional “culture of insensitivity” prompted Los Angeles County officials and firefighters to take and share photos of the remains of Kobe Bryant and other victims of the 2020 helicopter crash that killed the Lakers star, his 13-year-old daughter and seven others, a lawyer for Bryant’s widow told a jury on Wednesday.
Vanessa Bryant’s attorney, Luis Li, told jurors in his opening statement in the U.S. district court in her lawsuit for invasion of privacy against the county that the cell phone photos taken at the accident scene were taken by a deputy sheriff and a fire captain was “visual gossip” watched “for a laugh”, and had no official target.
“They were shared by deputies who played video games,” Li said. “They were repeatedly shared with people who had absolutely no reason to receive them.”
A county attorney defended taking the photos as an essential tool for first responders who wanted to share information while believing they could still save lives in the chaotic, dangerous and hard-to-reach scene of the accident in the hills of Calabasas west of Los Angeles.
“Site photography is essential,” said attorney J. Mira Hashmall.
Vanessa Bryant often cried during her attorney’s presentation. Minutes later, she was still wiping tears from her eyes during a break.
Li told jurors that learning about the circulation of the photos a month after the crash was not from the province, but from the… Los Angeles Times still exacerbated her raw suffering.
“January 26, 2020 was the worst day of Vanessa Bryant’s life. The province has made it much worse,” Li said. “They poured salt into an open wound and rubbed it in.”
Li played back jurors’ security videos of an off-duty deputy drinking in a bar and showed the photos to the bartender, who shook his head in dismay. The lawyer then showed a picture of the men laughing together. Li described firefighters looking at the phone photos at an awards ceremony two weeks later, and showed the jury an animated graph documenting their spread to nearly 30 people.
Li said the county has failed to conduct a thorough investigation to make sure any copy of the photo is accounted for, and because of fears that they will one day turn up, and her surviving children may find them online. see, Vanessa Bryant “will be haunted by what they did forever.”
During the opening statement of the defense, Hashmall told the jurors that the fact that the photos have not appeared for more than two years shows that the chiefs of the sheriff and the fire department were doing their job.
“They’re not online. They don’t appear in the media. They’ve never even been seen by the plaintiffs themselves,” Hashmall said. She added: “That is not an accident. That is a function of how diligent they were.”
Sheriff Alex Villanueva and department officials immediately brought in everyone involved and ordered them to delete the photos, rather than conduct a lengthy official investigation that could further harm the families, she said.
“He chose what he saw as the only option — decisive action,” Hashmall said. “He felt like every second mattered.”
Hashmall told the jury that the reason Li even had the bartender’s video to show, which she said had been deceptively edited to make the men laugh together, was because the sheriff got it the same day they received a complaint. from another bar patron who witnessed the photo sharing.
She said the deputy was struggling emotionally with the difficulty of coping with the accident scene, and that the bartender was an old friend he confided in.
“He pulled out his phone and that shouldn’t have happened,” she said. “In a span of time, in a moment of weakness, he showed those pictures, and he regrets it every day of his life.”
The defense attorney urged the jurors to look beyond the grief of those who filed the lawsuit and focus on the case.
“There is no doubt that these families have suffered,” she said. “It’s unspeakable. But this case isn’t about losing the crash. It’s about the photos.”
Chris Chester, whose wife Sara and daughter Payton were also killed in the crash, is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, seeking unspecified millions.
The county already agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle a similar lawsuit brought by two families whose relatives died in the Jan. 26, 2020 crash. Bryant and Chester refused to settle.
Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and other parents and players were flying to a girls’ basketball tournament when their chartered helicopter crashed into the fog. Federal security officials blamed the pilot error on the wreckage.
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