Kobe Bryant widow awarded $16 million in trial over crash pictures

LOS ANGELES — A federal jury discovered Wednesday that Los Angeles County should pay Kobe Bryant's widow $16 million for emotional misery brought on by deputies and firefighters sharing pictures of the our bodies of the NBA star and his daughter taken on the web site of the 2020 helicopter crash that killed them.

The 9 jurors who returned the unanimous verdict agreed with Vanessa Bryant and her attorneys that the pictures of the stays of Kobe Bryant and their 13-year-old daughter Gianna invaded her privateness and introduced her emotional misery.

The jury deliberated for 4 1/2 hours earlier than reaching the decision. Vanessa Bryant cried quietly because it was learn.

An legal professional for the county declined touch upon the decision exterior the courtroom.

The photographs had been shared principally between workers of the LA County sheriff's and hearth departments together with by some who had been enjoying video video games and attending an awards banquet. They had been additionally seen by a few of their spouses and in a single case by a bartender at a bar the place a deputy was ingesting.

Vanessa Bryant tearfully testified in the course of the 11-day trial that information of the pictures compounded her still-raw grief a month after shedding her husband and daughter, and that she nonetheless has panic assaults on the thought that they could nonetheless be on the market.

"I reside in concern day-after-day of being on social media and these popping up," she testified. "I reside in concern of my daughters being on social media and these popping up."

Her co-plaintiff Chris Chester, whose spouse and daughter had been additionally among the many 9 folks killed within the crash, was awarded $15 million.

Vanessa Bryant's attorneys didn't give jurors a greenback quantity they thought their shopper deserved, however Chester's legal professional gave them advised pointers that might have meant tens of thousands and thousands for every plaintiff.

Vanessa Bryant's lawyer Luis Li informed jurors that the close-up pictures had no official or investigative goal, and had been mere "visible gossip" shared out of a grotesque curiosity.

County legal professional J. Mira Hashmall argued in the course of the trial that the pictures had been a needed software for assessing the state of affairs.

She acknowledged that they need to not have been shared with everybody who noticed them. However she emphasised that the pictures had by no means appeared publicly, and had by no means even been seen by the plaintiffs. She stated that meant that Sheriff Alex Villanueva and different officers had taken decisive and efficient motion after they ordered those that had the pictures to delete them.

Kobe Bryant, the previous Lakers star, five-time NBA champion and member of the Basketball Corridor of Fame, was touring with Gianna and 7 others to a youth basketball sport when the helicopter they had been aboard crashed into hills in Calabasas west of Los Angeles on Jan. 26, 2020.

Federal security officers blamed pilot error for the crash.

The jury returned its verdict on Kobe Bryant Day, which is well known on Aug. 24 as a result of it makes use of each of his jersey numbers -- 8 and 24 -- and is the day after his birthday. Tuesday would have been Kobe's forty fourth birthday.