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    Vanessa Bryant Settles Helicopter Crash Photos Lawsuit for $28.85 Million

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    Bryant, the widow of the basketball star Kobe Bryant, sued Los Angeles County after some of its employees shared graphic photos of the crash that killed her husband and one of their daughters.Los Angeles County agreed to pay Vanessa Bryant and three of her daughters nearly $30 million to settle a lawsuit and potential claims over the sharing of graphic photos of the January 2020 helicopter crash that killed Bryant’s husband, the basketball star Kobe Bryant, and one of their daughters, according to a court filing on Tuesday. The settlement includes $15 million a jury awarded Vanessa Bryant in August, with additional funds to settle potential 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, 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 Jan. 26, 2020, Kobe Bryant, 41, and his daughter Gianna Bryant, 13, were in a helicopter with seven other people when it crashed in foggy conditions outside Los Angeles, killing all on board. Soon after, Vanessa Bryant learned that some employees of the county’s fire and sheriff’s departments had shared graphic photos of human remains from the crash. She sued for negligence and invasion of privacy in September 2020 and won at trial in August, providing a rare and expensive public admonition of some of Los Angeles’ most powerful institutions.The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to pay Bryant’s family $28.85 million to settle Bryant’s lawsuit and potential future claims by Bryant and her daughters: Natalia, 20, Bianka, 6, and Capri, 3. The jury in August awarded Bryant $16 million, which was later reduced by $1 million because of a clerical error.In a statement, Mira Hashmall, the lead trial counsel for Los Angeles County in Bryant’s case, called the settlement “fair and reasonable” and said all county-related litigation from the crash had been resolved.“We hope Ms. Bryant and her children continue to heal from their loss,” Hashmall said.Kobe Bryant, who starred for the Los Angeles Lakers for 20 years before retiring in 2016, was on his way to coach Gianna’s basketball team at his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif., when they boarded the helicopter on the day of the crash. The pilot, Ara Zobayan, became disoriented in the clouds and crashed into a hill near Calabasas, Calif., killing all nine people on board.In a deposition for her lawsuit, Vanessa Bryant said Rob Pelinka, the Lakers’ general manager and Kobe Bryant’s former agent, drove her later that morning to a sheriff’s station in Malibu, near the crash scene.Alex Villanueva, who was the Los Angeles County sheriff at the time, confirmed the deaths and asked Bryant if he could do anything for her, 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,’” 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.’”Bryant testified at trial that she learned from a Los Angeles Times report that a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy had showed photos of the crash at a bar. The existence of the photos, Bryant said, compounded the tragedy.“I live in fear of my daughters being on social media and these popping up,” Bryant testified.The pictures were primarily shared between employees of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s and fire departments.Lawyers for the county acknowledged that the photos were taken and shared, but argued that an immediate order to delete them kept them from being publicly disseminated.At the trial, the jury also awarded $15 million to Chris Chester, who joined the suit because his wife Sarah, 45, and daughter, Payton, 13, were killed in the crash. Los Angeles County agreed to pay the Chester family an additional $4.95 million to resolve any future claims.Two other families separately settled with the county over the photos for $1.25 million each in October 2021.Li previously said that Bryant would donate the proceeds from the lawsuit to her Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation, which honors Kobe and Gianna Bryant. More

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      Read Los Angeles County’s Trial Brief in the Bryant Case

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      Case 2:20-cv-09582-JFW-E Document 367 Filed 08/03/22 Page 16 of 22 Page ID #:31186

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      such as “high speed police chases”—the more demanding “purpose to harm” standard applies. Id. at 1137. When the officer’s conduct is more akin to negligence, courts have found such conduct insufficient to “shock the conscience.” For example, in Jones v. Jinparn, No. C 19-02817 SBA, 2020 WL 999806, at *4 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 2, 2020), the plaintiffs alleged that a police officer failed to make reasonable efforts to contact the decedent’s heirs before releasing the body for cremation. The court there reasoned that the officer’s conduct “sounds, at most, in negligence.” Id. at *5. “The Due Process Clause serves to protect the individual from the abuse of governmental power” and thus is not implicated by a negligent act. Id. By contrast, in Shelley v. County of San Joaquin, 996 F. Supp. 2d 921 (E.D. Cal. 2014), plaintiffs, who were the decedent’s family members, alleged that defendants violated their right to privacy by engaging in large-scale digging to exhume the decedent’s remains, which caused the remains to be “chewed up, pulverized, destroyed, crushed and commingled with other unknown murder victims” in the presence of the decedent’s mother and before news media. Id. at 931. The court concluded such conduct was likely to cause the family “profound grief” and therefore shocks the conscience. Id. (citation omitted). Here, the officers’ conduct at issue is more akin to that in Jones than in Shelley. First, with respect to the taking and internal sharing of photos among County personnel, the evidence will show that site photography at an incident is both appropriate and common practice in both the Fire and Sheriff’s Departments. Such photos are used, among other things, to provide intel, to assess the progress of an incident response, and to facilitate training post-incident. Indeed, some of the photos taken by County personnel here were shared with the NTSB to assist them in their investigation of the crash. With respect to Plaintiffs’ allegations that photos were shared with people outside the County or outside the confines of County business, Plaintiffs’ case is

      570887.2 11 DEFENDANTS’ TRIAL BRIEF More

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      Vanessa Bryant Is Suing L.A. County Over Kobe Bryant Crash Photos: What to Know

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      Bryant, whose husband and daughter died in a 2020 helicopter crash, said county employees shared photos of human remains from the crash, causing her emotional distress.Vanessa Bryant, the wife of the late basketball star Kobe Bryant, is expected to testify at a trial this week after she sued Los Angeles County and some of its agencies and employees for sharing photos of human remains from the helicopter crash that killed her husband and daughter.The January 2020 crash killed Mr. Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others as they traveled to a youth basketball tournament at Mr. Bryant’s academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif., northwest of Los Angeles.Mr. Bryant, 41, joined the N.B.A. out of high school, spending his entire 20-year professional career with the Los Angeles Lakers. He won five championships and retired in 2016 as one of the N.B.A.’s top career scorers and one of the world’s most popular sports figures.In her lawsuit, Mrs. Bryant accused Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and fire department employees of negligence and invading her privacy by sharing crash photos “without any legitimate purpose.”From left to right, Kobe Bryant, Gianna Bryant, Vanessa Bryant and Natalia Bryant in November 2017. Kobe and Gianna were killed in a helicopter crash in 2020.Reed Saxon/Associated PressMrs. Bryant said she “has suffered (and continues to suffer) severe emotional distress” and that she feared that the photographs would appear online.“I do not want my little girls or I to ever have to see their remains in that matter,” Mrs. Bryant said during a deposition in October 2021. “Nor do I think it’s right that the photographs were taken in the first place because it’s already tough enough that I have to experience this heartache and this loss.”Mrs. Bryant has three other daughters with Mr. Bryant: Capri, 3; Bianka, 5; and Natalia, 19.Officials with Los Angeles County and the sheriff’s and fire departments have acknowledged that photos were shared, but said they were deleted.The trial began Aug. 10. Here is what else to know about Mrs. Bryant’s lawsuit.What caused the crash?More than a year after the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board determined that the pilot’s “poor decision” to fly at excessive speeds in foggy weather was the probable cause of the accident. The pilot, Ara Zobayan, was among those killed in the crash.[Read the 86-page final investigation report from the N.T.S.B., which includes a six-page executive summary.]The safety board found that Mr. Zobayan had become so disoriented in the clouds that he thought he was ascending when he was turning left just before the helicopter crashed into a hill near Calabasas, Calif.The board also faulted the charter company, Island Express Helicopters, for “inadequate review and oversight of its safety management processes.”Read Vanessa Bryant’s LawsuitBryant accused Los Angeles County and some of its agencies and employees of negligence and invasion of privacy for sharing photos of human remains at the helicopter crash that killed her husband and daughter.Read Document 41 pagesWho saw the photos? Where are the photos now?In a January court filing, Mrs. Bryant’s lawyers said close-up pictures of Mr. Bryant’s and Gianna Bryant’s remains “were passed around on at least 28 Sheriff’s Department devices and by at least a dozen firefighters,” including at a bar and an awards gala. In her lawsuit, Mrs. Bryant claimed that social media users had said they had seen the photos.Mrs. Bryant named four sheriff’s deputies in her lawsuit and accused them of sharing the photos with each other, other deputies or family members. The Los Angeles Times reported in February 2020 that one of the deputies — identified as Joey Cruz in Mrs. Bryant’s lawsuit — showed the photos at a bar, prompting a bar patron to file a complaint with the sheriff’s department.Emily Tauscher, a captain at the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, testified at trial that after the crash Mr. Bryant was identified by his skin tone and arm tattoos.Los Angeles County and law enforcement officials have said that the photos were deleted and never “made it into the public arena.”What has been the county’s response to the lawsuit?Lawyers representing Los Angeles County said that taking photographs of fatal crime and accident scenes was a common practice for investigative and information-sharing purposes.“The County continues to express its deepest sympathies for the families that suffered this terrible loss,” Mira Hashmall, the lead outside counsel for the county, said in a statement. “The County has also worked tirelessly for two and half years to make sure its site photos of the crash were never publicly disseminated. The evidence shows they never were. And that is fact, not speculation.”The county has not called any witnesses yet, but in a court filing its lawyers are pushing to include some of Mrs. Bryant’s Instagram posts at trial to counter her claims of severe emotional distress caused by the shared photos. Mrs. Bryant’s lawyers have said her posts on Instagram, where she has 15.5 million followers, are not relevant to this case.The disputed posts include Mrs. Bryant and her family on vacations. Mrs. Bryant also shared images of herself dressed as the Disney character Cruella de Vil from the “101 Dalmatians” movie franchise.“Plaintiff’s emotional state is at the center of this case, and there is little more revealing of Plaintiff’s emotional state than her own words about her life, sadness, the targets of her anger, her activities, and other stressors that could contribute to any emotional distress,” the county said in a court filing this month about trial exhibits.The Bryant family at Kobe Bryant’s jersey retirement ceremony in December 2017. Kobe Bryant spent 20 seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers.Allen Berezovsky/Getty ImagesWhat has happened so far during the trial?The trial, as anticipated, has been emotional.Mrs. Bryant wept during the opening statements made by her lawyer, Luis Li.The accounts provided by emergency medical workers who took graphic photographs are conflicting. Brian Jordan, a retired fired captain who said he was ordered to take photos of the crash scene, left the witness stand three times because he needed breaks to finish his testimony.“I do not remember what I took pictures of,” Jordan testified. “The way the whole scene looked, it’s going to haunt me forever.”Deputy Rafael Mejia, who is named in the lawsuit, testified he received 15 to 20 photographs from another deputy the day of the crash. He said he sent about 10 of the pictures to two deputies, including Joey Cruz, who later would share them in public with a bartender. Mejia expressed regret over sharing the photos, saying, “Curiosity got the best of us.”Cruz testified that he made a “misjudgment” when he shared the photos.Lakers General Manager Rob Pelinka, who was Gianna Bryant’s godfather and had been Mr. Bryant’s agent before becoming a team executive, detailed his relationship with Mrs. Bryant and testified about the anxiety she had experienced because of the shared photos.“She wants an air of love and joy and peace and she does everything she can do to preserve that,” Mr. Pelinka said. “You experience the grief from loss, but there’s also the anxiety from these deplorable actions.”What else did Mrs. Bryant say during her deposition?Mrs. Bryant said she learned of the accident when a family assistant knocked on her door in the late morning of Jan. 26, 2020. As she tried calling Mr. Bryant, notifications of people mourning Mr. Bryant popped up on her phone.Mrs. Bryant said she went to an airport in an attempt to secure a helicopter to take her to the crash site but was told the weather conditions were not safe. Mr. Pelinka drove Mrs. Bryant to the sheriff’s station in Malibu, near the crash site, she said.At the station, “no one would answer” questions about her husband and daughter, Mrs. Bryant said. She was escorted back and forth between rooms, and after a long wait, a pastor walked in and Sheriff Alex Villanueva entered with a publicist. Mrs. Bryant said she wanted privacy and asked the publicist to leave the room.Villanueva confirmed the deaths, Mrs. Bryant said, and asked if he could do anything for her.“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,’” Mrs. 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.’”How much is Mrs. Bryant suing for?Mrs. Bryant is suing for compensatory and punitive damages.“That would be up to the jury,” Mrs. Bryant responded when asked during her deposition how much money she sought. “I don’t — I’m not asking for a dollar amount.”Are the families of other crash victims involved in Mrs. Bryant’s case?Christopher Chester, whose wife, Sarah, 45, and daughter, Payton, 13, died in the crash, is joining the lawsuit. Two other victims’ families settled for $1.25 million each last year.Has any other litigation involving the crash been settled?Mrs. Bryant and the family members of the other victims reached a settlement in June 2021 with Island Express Helicopters, its owner, Island Express Holding Corporation and the estate of Mr. Zobayan.Terms of the settlement were confidential.Vik Jolly and More

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      Read Vanessa Bryant’s Lawsuit

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      Case 2:20-cv-09582-JFW-E Document 54 Filed 03/17/21 Page 2 of 41 Page ID #:1137

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      Plaintiff Vanessa Bryant (“Plaintiff”), through her undersigned counsel, hereby brings this action against defendants County of Los Angeles (the “County”), the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (the “Sheriff’s Department”), the Los Angeles County Fire Department (the “Fire Department,” and, collectively with the County and the Sheriff’s Department, the “Entity Defendants”), Joey Cruz, Rafael Mejia, Michael Russell, and Raul Versales (collectively, the “Deputy Defendants,” and, collectively with the County, the Sheriff’s Department, and the Fire Department, the “Defendants”) seeking damages to remedy violations of rights under the United States Constitution and for negligence and invasion of privacy pursuant to California law. This Court has subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. sections 1331 and 1343. Plaintiff alleges, on personal knowledge as to herself and information and belief as to others, as follows: INTRODUCTION 1. On the morning of Sunday, January 26, 2020, three eighth-grade girls, joined by parents and coaches, left their homes in Orange County to play in a youth basketball tournament in Thousand Oaks. Making their way by helicopter, they encountered dense fog. Rather than land or turn around, the pilot pushed into the fog and became disoriented. The helicopter descended rapidly and crashed into the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, killing everyone onboard. Vanessa Bryant’s thirteen year-old daughter, Gianna Bryant, and husband of nearly twenty years, Kobe Bryant, were among those who died. 2. In the aftermath of the crash, several of the victims’ family members gathered at the L.A. County Sheriff’s station in Lost Hills, devastated and distraught. Sheriff Alex Villanueva met with them and assured Mrs. Bryant that his deputies were securing the crash site. Based on a leak by law enforcement, the gossip and celebrity news site TMZ had reported that Kobe, a singular figure in

      Case No. 2:20-cv-09582-JFW-E FIRST AMENDED COMPLAINT More

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      New Filings Suggest Kobe Bryant Crash Photos Spread Widely Among Workers

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      Lawyers for Bryant’s widow, Vanessa, who is suing Los Angeles County over the photos, charted how emergency workers shared the images on cellphones. The county has denied wrongdoing.A fire department officer flashed the disturbing photos to a group of people during cocktail hour before a gala. A sheriff’s deputy shared the images with a bartender, who grimaced and made a slashing gesture over his neck. Another deputy, who could not believe how gruesome the pictures were, forwarded them to a colleague while playing online video games with his friends.Photos of the bodies of the Lakers star Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others who died in a helicopter crash near Los Angeles in January 2020 were shared on at least 28 devices owned by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department personnel and by at least a dozen Los Angeles County firefighters, according to the latest legal filings submitted by the legal team for Vanessa Bryant, Kobe Bryant’s widow.The court papers, based on depositions and the forensic investigation of cellphones, attempt to demonstrate the chain that formed to disseminate the images and how widely they were shared. Bryant is suing the county and some of its agencies and employees, claiming to have experienced emotional distress over the sharing of the photos, while the county has denied any wrongdoing and says it worked to keep the photos out of public hands when officials became aware of them.Several of those who viewed the photos described the remains in crude terms, a point Bryant said in the filings made the situation worse. “I imagine Kobe watching over what occurred at that crash scene, and I am overcome with anger and emotion,” Bryant wrote in a declaration accompanying the filings.She added: “I also feel extreme sadness and anger knowing that photos of my husband’s and daughter’s bodies were laughed about while shown at a bar and an awards banquet.”The filings were submitted in response to Los Angeles County’s motion in November for summary judgment, requesting the lawsuit be dismissed.A hearing is scheduled for Dec. 27.Louis Miller, the lawyer known as Skip whom the county hired for the case, said in a statement that the county sympathized with Bryant’s losses, but that it is not at fault.County emergency workers, he said, “responded to that crash and, at her specific request, set up a no-fly zone, undertook extensive efforts to keep the public and paparazzi away, and made sure none of the investigative photos were ever publicly disseminated. The County did its job and believes there is no merit to this lawsuit.”Bryant’s legal team has disputed the county’s statements, saying the sharing of the photos among workers without any discernible investigative purpose amounted to public dissemination. The lawyers’ submission includes depositions from workers who shared the photos as well as forensic evidence from the phones to chart the sharing of the photos.Vanessa Bryant, Kobe Bryant’s widow, is suing Los Angeles County, some of its agencies and some of its employees.David Butler II/USA Today Sports, via ReutersTony Imbrenda, a Los Angeles County Fire Department public information officer, shared the images with a group of firefighters and a few other people at a gala honoring emergency medical workers, according to the filings.“I just saw Kobe’s body all burnt up before I’m about to eat,” one bystander remarked, according to the filing. Last year, Imbrenda, who has not commented on the case, filed a lawsuit against the county after he was demoted for refusing to turn over his personal cellphone. Imbrenda had received some of the images on his work cellphone from Brian Jordan, a safety officer, who misrepresented himself at the crash scene as a fire chief in charge of media relations, according to Bryant’s legal team. Jordan sent pictures to several others, according to the filings. He faced termination by the department before retiring early. A message left with his lawyer was not returned.The images coursed among sheriff’s department personnel like a chain message.Doug Johnson, a sheriff’s deputy who isn’t named as a defendant in Bryant’s lawsuit, captured pictures of the remains with his personal cellphone, according to the documents, and at least four images focused closely on the body parts of Kobe and Gianna Bryant. He sent the pictures to another deputy, Raul Versales, who testified that “he did not need to have the photographs,” but sent them along to four other members of the department.Deputy Michael Russell, who testified that he had asked for the pictures out of curiosity, shared them with another deputy while playing a video game. Deputy Joey Cruz displayed them to a bartender, which prompted a citizen’s complaint to the sheriff’s department in February 2020.Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva in response instructed his staff members to immediately delete the photos upon learning of the complaint. They did not face discipline, according to the county’s filing, because, in the county’s view, the photos were not publicly disseminated. “I can tell you I did exactly what was needed to be done to ensure there was no further harm to the family,” Villanueva testified, adding, “if I had to do it all over again, I’d probably make the exact same decision.”Vanessa Bryant had asked Villanueva to secure the site the day of the crash and to ensure that no photos of the deceased would leak.Bryant’s legal team maintains that the photos may already be in the public domain and the ones taken by emergency workers were deleted in order to destroy evidence. The county contends that ordering employees to delete the photos was in fact complying with Bryant’s wishes that they not be disseminated any further.But the lawyers representing Bryant said they have been notified by citizens of other instances of the photos spreading. An Orange County law enforcement officer who was not part of the response to the crash showed the photos at a bar, the lawyers said in a filing. An unknown person forwarded Bryant a Twitter post that purported to be a photo of Kobe Bryant’s remains that matched authentic images of the crash site, the lawyers said. The filings are the latest in a highly contested case. In previous rulings, a judge decided that Villanueva and Daryl Osby, the Los Angeles County fire chief, must sit for depositions — Villanueva has done so, and Osby’s is pending — and Bryant and her therapist were compelled to produce documents relating to their sessions.Kevin Draper More

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      Vanessa Bryant Tells of Kobe Bryant's Death in New Deposition

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      Bryant was being questioned by a lawyer defending Los Angeles County in her lawsuit about the sharing of photos of human remains from the helicopter crash that killed nine people.The morning started for Vanessa Bryant the way most weekends do for parents with busy children. One of her daughters was at a college prep class. Her husband was taking another daughter to a basketball game. She stayed home with the two youngest girls, a toddler and a newborn.But then a family assistant knocked on the door around 11:30 a.m. that Sunday and told Bryant that her husband, Kobe Bryant, and their daughter Gianna had been in a helicopter accident, according to a transcript of a deposition of Bryant in a lawsuit between her and Los Angeles County.The assistant said that five people had survived the crash that day, Jan. 26, 2020. Bryant said that she figured Kobe and Gianna would be among them and would be helping the other victims. But as she tried to call her husband, notifications began popping up on her phone: R.I.P. Kobe. R.I.P. Kobe.“My life will never be the same without my husband and daughter,” Bryant said during the deposition.Read the Deposition of Vanessa BryantBryant described the day of the helicopter crash that killed her husband, Kobe Bryant, and their daughter Gianna.Read Document 50 pagesIt would be hours before Bryant would learn, officially, that Kobe, 41, and Gianna, 13, had been killed along with seven others in a crash just outside Los Angeles. In her rush to get to the crash site, before she learned of their deaths, Bryant went to an airport in an attempt to secure a helicopter to take her — but was rebuffed because she was told the weather made it unsafe to fly.These and many other details of that day have become public for the first time through questions Bryant answered during a videoconferencing meeting with a lawyer defending Los Angeles County. She is suing the county and some of its agencies and employees for emotional distress she said was caused by emergency medical workers who took and shared photos of the human remains at the helicopter crash site.Kobe Bryant, the retired Los Angeles Lakers superstar, had been on his way to coach Gianna in a series of games at his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif.Vanessa Bryant’s deposition comes at a crucial point in the case and amid an escalating battle between the lawyers over the scope of what Los Angeles County and the other defendants can request of Bryant, other plaintiffs and witnesses.One of the most contentious issues, the subject of numerous court filings in recent days, is whether the county can conduct what are called independent medical examinations, which involve psychiatric evaluations, of each of the plaintiffs.Bryant’s lawyers argue that the examinations are “cruel” and that the county is sending a message by requesting them. “When public servants violate the privacy and constitutional rights of the citizens they swore to protect and serve, the victims must run a gauntlet to seek justice,” Bryant’s lawyers argued in one of the filings.But the county contends that the examinations are “a routine part of the discovery process,” according to filings. Bryant and the other plaintiffs are arguing that they suffered emotional distress because of the actions of county employees, and the county believes a medical professional should be allowed to examine the extent of that suffering.At times, Louis Miller, an attorney representing Los Angeles County, expressed remorse for asking Bryant invasive questions. “It’s not harassment,” Miller said at one point. “It’s just a lawsuit. And I’m so sorry to put you through this, but like I said at the beginning, I’ve got to do my job.”“I shouldn’t have to be going through this,” Bryant responded. “It’s not just a lawsuit.”Bryant said that after she was told that she could not fly to the crash site, she met up with Rob Pelinka, the Lakers general manager who served as Kobe’s agent during part of his N.B.A. career. Pelinka, Bryant said, drove them during the hour-and-forty-five-minute trip to the sheriff’s station in Malibu, near the crash site.At the sheriff’s station, Bryant said “no one would answer” questions about her husband and daughter. She was escorted back and forth between rooms, and after a long wait, she said, a pastor walked in and then Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva came with a publicist. Bryant said she wanted privacy and asked the publicist to leave the room.Villanueva confirmed the deaths, Bryant said, and asked if he could do anything for her.“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,’” 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.’”Villanueva, Bryant said, excused himself from the room. Bryant said that he reassured her the area had been secured when he returned. Bryant said that she exited the back of the office while a news conference was being conducted in the front of the office.Miller asked Bryant if she was seeking a monetary judgment in the lawsuit.Bryant expressed her desire to have the responders who took the pictures held accountable.“The impact of the helicopter crash was so damaging, I just don’t understand how someone can have no regard for life and compassion, and, instead, choose to take that opportunity to photograph lifeless and helpless individuals for their own sick amusement,” Bryant said.Miller asked again: “Ms. Bryant, I understand your testimony about accountability. My question to you is: Are you also seeking monetary recovery, damages, money, in this lawsuit?”Bryant responded that it would be up to the jury.Later in the deposition, Miller repeatedly asked Bryant to look at some graphic images and messages that had been sent to her on social media, some digitally altered, to make the point that others besides sheriff’s deputies were causing her emotional distress. Bryant, according to the deposition, put her hand in front of the camera and monitor instead of looking at the images. She said she interacted with fans less often on social media out of fear that she would be blindsided with pictures of the crash site.Bryant said she recovered the clothes that Kobe and Gianna wore during the crash over concerns that people would take photos of them.“They suffered a lot,” Bryant said during the deposition. “And if their clothes represent the condition of their bodies, I cannot imagine how someone could be so callous and have no regard for them or their friends and just share the images as if they were animals on the street.”The sides are also fighting over whether Villanueva and Daryl Osby, the Los Angeles County fire chief, should sit for depositions.Villanueva has gained public prominence in the last few years in part because his department handled high-profile cases like the helicopter crash, and a car crash in which the golf star Tiger Woods was injured. As he prepares for re-election next year, Villanueva has been accused of targeting political enemies and has fought with city councilors and watchdog groups.The defendants contend that, as department heads, Osby and Villanueva generally are not subject to depositions, and that they do not have any specialized knowledge that other fire and law enforcement officials who have already been deposed do not have. But in an email, lawyers for Bryant listed 14 different reasons they believe Villanueva should have to sit for a deposition, mostly relating to how he handled the possession of photos of the crash site by sheriff’s deputies.After the requests to medically examine all plaintiffs, 10 of them, including all of the young children involved, have recently exited the case. Two families settled with the county last week, the terms of which have not been disclosed. And while Christopher Chester, whose wife, Sarah, and daughter Peyton died in the crash, is continuing his lawsuit, he has dismissed his surviving children as plaintiffs.The sides are also fighting over the scope of witness interviews, and which documents those witnesses must produce.Bryant listed a number of witnesses to the emotional distress she said she has experienced, including Rob and Kristin Pelinka; the pop star Ciara Wilson; the television host and actress La La Anthony; the R&B singer Monica Arnold, known more popularly as Monica; Sharia Washington, Kobe Bryant’s sister; and Catherine Gasol, the wife of the former N.B.A. player Pau Gasol.All of those witnesses are being scheduled for depositions, and they are being asked to produce volumes of documents. The subpoena issued to Wilson, for instance, asked for all documents and communications related to Bryant’s emotional distress between Wilson and Bryant or anybody else since 2010 — 10 years before the crash. It also sought all documents and communications between Wilson and Bryant about any topic since the day of the crash, and all of Wilson’s communications with others about Bryant since the day of the crash.“Defendants’ document requests are grossly overbroad,” a lawyer for the witnesses wrote in an email on Monday that was submitted to the court.“As we have discussed, the document requests are not overbroad,” a lawyer for the county responded, though they did later agree that witnesses wouldn’t have to turn over all of their communications with Bryant since the crash, just the communications about her mental state going back to 2010.Some of these issues and others could be resolved in the coming days. The judge has scheduled hearings for Oct. 29 and Nov. 5 to rule on some motions. More

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      Vanessa Bryant Uses Her Platform to Battle the Powerful

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      Through social media and a lawsuit, she is trying to hold law enforcement to account in ways that are uncommon for women, and especially for women of color.For years, under the power dynamics of Los Angeles policing, many victims who have accused powerful law enforcement institutions of wrongdoing have found their charges batted aside or buried in bureaucratic inertia.But in recent months the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has faced a new, potent adversary: Vanessa Bryant.By leveraging her wealth and celebrity, Bryant, 38, is flipping the usual script. Through social media posts and a lawsuit, she is holding authorities to account in ways that are uncommon for women, and especially for women of color. And she has done it all while she navigates her grief after the deaths of her 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and her husband, Kobe Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers star, who were killed in a helicopter crash near Calabasas, Calif., in January 2020.She filed the suit in September against the Sheriff’s Department, four deputies, the county and its fire department for invasion of privacy and negligence after deputies used personal cellphones to take pictures of the site that included the remains of her husband, their daughter and the seven others who died.In mid-March, Vanessa Bryant shared an amended complaint and the names of the four accused deputies — Joey Cruz, Rafael Mejia, Michael Russell and Raul Versales — to her more than 14 million Instagram followers. County lawyers had tried to keep the identities of the deputies hidden, arguing, in part, that they could be the target of hackers. It was an odd argument, considering that the lawyers had said the images had been deleted. A federal judge sided with Bryant.In the month since Bryant shared the names of the deputies, the call for law enforcement accountability has remained at the forefront of public debate through the murder trail of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis officer who knelt on the neck of George Floyd.Bryant’s public campaign against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a high-profile but long-troubled institution, has caught the attention of community activists and legal experts who are accustomed to families, especially those of color, silently hoping for but not receiving what they would consider justice. Vanessa Bryant is Mexican-American, and her husband was Black.“She has the ability to speak out and highlight what have been deep-seated and pervasive problems in the Sheriff’s Department around corruption, secrecy and lack of accountability,” said Priscilla Ocen, a member of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Civilian Oversight Commission and a professor at Loyola Law School. “She has the means. She has the visibility and, importantly, she has the protection that is afforded based on her wealth and celebrity in ways that families in East Los Angeles or Compton just don’t.”Bryant, through her lawyer, declined to comment for this article. She has also filed a wrongful-death suit against Island Express Helicopters, the company that operated the helicopter that crashed.“Transparency promotes accountability,” said Luis Li, one of Bryant’s lawyers. “We look forward to presenting Mrs. Bryant’s case in open court.”The Sheriff’s Department, in response to a request for comment, referred to a tweet from Sheriff Alex Villanueva: “We will refrain from trying this case in the media and will wait for the appropriate venue. Our hearts go out to all the families affected by this tragedy.”The department released a statement last fall that said, “As a result of the swift actions we took under extraordinary circumstances, no pictures made it into the public arena.”The sheriff had assured Bryant that deputies had secured the crash scene to ensure her privacy, according to Bryant’s suit.The Los Angeles Times reported in February 2020 that a citizen filed a complaint after a deputy showed graphic photos of the crash victims at a bar. Instead of the complaint starting a formal inquiry, according to the suit, the deputies were told “that if they came clean and deleted the photos, they would not face any discipline.”The suit stated that Bryant “privately sought information from the Sheriff’s Department and Fire Department to assess whether she should brace for her loved ones’ remains to surface on the internet.”Firefighters worked the scene of a helicopter crash.Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressShe asked if the photos had been secured and how far they had ventured. According to the suit, each department “refused to respond to all but one of Mrs. Bryant’s questions and asserted they had no legal obligation to assist.”The suit stated that Cruz, then a deputy trainee, received copies of the photos from Mejia. Cruz is accused of showing them to his niece at his mother’s house, while making a crude remark about the images of the bodies, and of showing the images at a restaurant in Norwalk, Calif., where he could be seen zooming in and out of the pictures on a security camera.“Many of us are on the receiving end of police mistreatment and we just have to swallow those indignities,” said Jody Armour, a professor at the University of Southern California, whose father, Fred, used criminal law he taught himself in prison to be released after a significant portion of his sentence. “Grin and bear it, because we don’t have the social kind of capital to be taken as seriously as she’s being taken.”Law enforcement officials, Ocen said, typically shape the narratives that filter out of debated interactions. As a result, public opinion is often split about whom to sympathize with. Not in this case, she said.“There’s universal sympathy, universal outrage for the conduct of the Sheriff’s Department in trivializing, minimizing and desecrating the memory of Kobe Bryant and their daughter,” Ocen said.Villanueva, the sheriff, announced an investigation into the sharing of the photos in March 2020, before the suit was filed, and asked the county’s Office of Inspector General to monitor it.“That was a sham,” said Max Huntsman, the inspector general.By that point, Huntsman said, his office had started an inquiry into Villanueva’s announcement that the photos were ordered to be deleted. Additional efforts to monitor the investigation were stymied by the Sheriff’s Department, which only offered him periodic, redacted updates, Huntsman said.“You can’t really rely on an organization to investigate itself when it’s the one that may have behaved improperly,” he said. “And when an elected official is the person who may have behaved improperly, then somebody else needs to investigate them if you want it to be at all credible and have real accountability.”The watchdog positions of the oversight committee and inspector general were created as checks in the aftermath of department scandals before Villanueva’s tenure as sheriff.Ocen and eight other civilians make up the commission, which recommends department improvements. But the group does not have the authority to force the department to adopt policies or discipline personnel. Recently, voters granted the commission the power to subpoena records.The relationship between the Sheriff’s Department and the committee and inspector general is adversarial. Two years ago, the Sheriff’s Department began a criminal investigation into whether Huntsman had illegally obtained internal records.The issues highlighted by Bryant’s suit represent a broader pattern within the Sheriff’s Department, Huntsman said. In December, his office released a 17-page report highlighting what it called “unlawful conduct” by the department, such as threatening county officials, failing to disclose the names of officers involved in shootings and not enforcing Covid-19 safety directives.A month earlier, the commission unanimously approved a resolution that condemned Villanueva’s leadership and called for his resignation.In February, Sheriff Alex Villanueva answered questions about Tiger Woods’s car crash.Allison Zaucha for The New York Times“I’m on record saying that I think he’s a criminal, and I’m on record as identifying a bunch of conduct by the Sheriff’s Department under his watch that is completely unlawful,” Huntsman said. “We have a rogue law enforcement agency as a result of what they’re doing, but that doesn’t mean he has to resign. He has to start following the law.”In September, Bryant took notice when Villanueva called on LeBron James to double the reward leading to information on a gunman who had ambushed and shot two deputies.In response, Bryant posted screenshots from a Twitter user onto her Instagram story that read: “He shouldn’t be challenging LeBron James to match a reward or ‘to step up to the plate.’ He couldn’t even ‘step up to the plate’ and hold his deputies accountable for photographing dead children.”The suits, including ones from the families of the crash’s victims, are ongoing. Some change has already occurred.In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed into law a bill making it a misdemeanor for law enforcement and emergency medical workers to take photos of scenes that do not involve their work. The bill, H.R. 2655, was introduced by Assemblyman Mike Gipson, Democrat of Carson, and violations carry fines of up to $1,000. Gipson named it the Kobe Bryant Bill.“Emergency medical workers not only have a responsibility to the victims, but also I believe to the family,” Gipson said. “There’s an obligation to protect the situation and not try to expose the family to further grief.”He added: “Hopefully this is a deterrent that will prevent this from happening again.” More

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      Why Didn't Tiger Woods Get a Speeding Ticket?

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      Woods’s crash raised questions about how law enforcement officers treated his case.To anybody who has ever received a speeding ticket, the resolution of the investigation into Tiger Woods’s car crash in February might seem odd.Despite the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s determination that Woods drove well above 80 miles per hour in a 45 m.p.h. zone, he was not given a ticket or charged with reckless driving. Law enforcement officers did not conduct field sobriety tests or obtain a search warrant for a blood test or toxicology report.This week, at a news conference to announce the results of his department’s investigation, Sheriff Alex Villanueva said his officers had conducted a thorough investigation and treated the famous golfer as they would anyone else.“Now, I know there is some saying that somehow he received special or preferential treatment of some kind,” Villanueva said. “That is absolutely false.”Some criminal defense lawyers in the Los Angeles area who regularly represent clients accused of reckless driving or driving under the influence questioned whether the Sheriff’s Department pursued its case against Woods as aggressively as it had pursued cases against others.“I know how law enforcement works there, and this one is curious,” said Stephen Sitkoff, a criminal defense lawyer who spent a decade working in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.There are three key portions of the investigation to consider:Why didn’t Woods get a speeding ticket?Tiger Woods was driving at least 40 m.p.h. above the posted speed limit when he lost control. But nobody actually saw him driving that fast — a major detail under California law. His approximate speed of about 84 to 87 m.p.h. at the start of the crash was recorded by the vehicle’s event data recorder, known colloquially as the black box.California’s vehicle code places a strong emphasis on needing a witness to ticket somebody for speeding.“In order to issue a citation, you have something to indicate — an independent witness or an observation by a peace officer,” said James Powers, the captain of the Lomita Sheriff’s Station, which handled the investigation of Woods’s crash.Had Woods been issued a citation based on the readings from the data recorder, Powers said and experts agreed, there was a good chance a judge would have thrown the case out.“We have gotten accustomed to this very false presumption, which is a computer said so, so it must be true,” said Anthony Falangetti, a criminal defense lawyer in Long Beach.Falangetti reeled off a list of ways the data recorder could be challenged if used by itself as evidence: The data recorder could have been programmed improperly, its estimates could be inaccurate and the speedometer in the car could be calibrated incorrectly.“There are all sorts of reasons why that circumstantial evidence isn’t taken for granted by the sheriff’s department,” he said.Woods during the Masters tournament in November 2020.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWhy wasn’t Woods charged with reckless driving?Section 23103 of the California Vehicle Code states that somebody is guilty of reckless driving if they drive with “willful or wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property.”Driving 40 m.p.h. over the speed limit on a winding, downhill road arguably meets the criteria for reckless driving. In a weird quirk of the law, it might actually have been easier to charge Woods with reckless driving, a misdemeanor crime that holds the possibility of jail time, than to give him a speeding ticket, because the California vehicle code does not require witnesses to charge someone with reckless driving.Captain Powers, however, said there was no evidence of reckless driving. “For reckless driving, you have to have multiple violations in conjunction with one another — like multiple unsafe lane changes, passing vehicles in an unsafe manner, kind of like road race stuff — and that did not exist here,” he said. “Therefore, reckless driving is not appropriate.”But a number of lawyers who have defended clients charged with reckless driving disagree.“The D.A. could easily get a conviction for reckless driving based on the black box alone,” said Hart Levin, a Los Angeles lawyer who specializes in D.U.I. defense. “And even if the black box were somehow not deemed reliable, the accident reconstruction would show the car going in excess of 70 m.p.h. when it hit the tree.”Patrick Carey, a criminal defense lawyer and former deputy district attorney, also wonders why Woods was not charged. “I personally have handled cases with much less egregious facts where my clients have been charged in court with misdemeanors,” he wrote in an email.But while it’s possible Woods could have been charged, Carey said he did not think that a less famous person would necessarily be charged under the same circumstances.That highlights a fundamental but easily overlooked part of the justice system: Thousands of single-vehicle crashes occur every day and law enforcement authorities have wide latitude in how hard they decide to pursue cases.Woods was treated at Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center after his crash.Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesWhy wasn’t Woods checked more thoroughly in regard to driving under the influence?The Sheriff’s Department did not obtain a warrant to draw blood from Woods to test whether or not he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol when he crashed.“Without the signs of impairment, we don’t get to the point where we can actually author a search warrant and develop the probable cause to get that, and execute that search warrant — so that did not happen,” Captain Powers said.Several pages of the 22-page official crash report are dedicated to laying out the steps sheriff’s deputies took to investigate whether Woods was impaired:Field sobriety tests could not be performed because of Woods’s injuries.The first deputy on the scene did not smell alcohol, and there were no open containers or prescription medications in the car.While being extracted from his car, Woods responded to questions without delay, his speech was not slurred and his eyes were not bloodshot or watery.The firefighters who treated Woods at the scene said his pupils did not show signs of “narcotic analgesic influence.”Video obtained from Woods’s hotel on the morning of the crash did not show him swaying or staggering, and he drove away from the hotel safely.The hotel’s valet and valet service manager did not notice anything unsafe or unusual.Woods was interviewed at the hospital and there were no signs of impairment.Someone who was with Woods throughout his time in Los Angeles, including the morning of the accident, said they did not observe Woods drinking alcohol or taking any prescription medications. This person’s identity is redacted in the report.Four years ago, Woods pleaded guilty to reckless driving, after he was found asleep at the driver’s wheel on the side of the road. He blamed the episode on the interaction between prescription medications he was taking at the time.But just because Woods has previously driven while impaired by prescription medications does not mean the Sheriff’s Department could use that to obtain a warrant to test his blood.“‘He did it before, therefore he did it again’ is fundamentally not a constitutional basis for anything,” Falangetti said. “We are principally opposed to that kind of accusation in criminal law.”Still, the Sheriff’s Department could have pushed harder to test Woods’s blood, especially considering there was at least minor evidence of prescription pill use. According to the crash report, an “empty plastic pharmaceutical container” with no label was found in a backpack that was resting in the brush next to Woods’s vehicle.“If it was one of my clients, not anybody special, I think they would have been given a blood test,” Sitkoff said.Would pursuing the case have been worthwhile?Woods sustained severe injuries in the crash and ultimately, the Sheriff’s Department may simply believe it is not necessary to seek more punishment. When asked why Woods was not cited for speeding, Captain Powers said, “Part of it was because of the circumstances that he endured throughout the collision.”Woods did not hit another car, and nobody else was hurt. A speeding ticket would most likely have been thrown out, a reckless driving case may have been difficult to prove and there were no obvious signs that Woods was illegally impaired.Under the circumstances, Woods’s sustaining devastating leg injuries that hold the possibility of ending his golf career is perhaps a worse punishment than being charged with a misdemeanor.“I think that, based on the physical punishment he suffered, it is more of a case of ‘What’s the point in charging him?’” Carey said. More

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      Tiger Woods Was Driving About 40 MPH Past The Speed Limit When He Crashed

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      The stretch of road where Woods crashed in February is known for speeding and crashes.Tiger Woods was speeding when he crashed his sport-utility vehicle in February, reaching speeds of more than 80 m.p.h. in a 45 m.p.h. zone on winding road near Los Angeles, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva.Villanueva said Woods was traveling between 84 and 87 miles per hour when he lost control, crossing over a median and hitting the curb on the opposite of the road. The vehicle struck a tree at an estimated 75 m.p.h. and was sent airborne, eventually stopping in some brush.“The primary causal factor for this traffic collision was driving at a speed unsafe for the road conditions and the inability to negotiate the curve of the roadway,” said Villanueva.Woods was not cited for driving too fast and no criminal charges will be filed, Villanueva said. He added that there were no signs of impairment or intoxication, and that Woods was wearing his seatbelt.The captain of the Lomita Sheriff’s Station, James Powers, said that data was obtained from the vehicle’s event data recorder, known colloquially as the black box. The data showed that Woods had hit the accelerator throughout the crash, and that the pressure applied to the pedal was 99 percent. Powers said he believed that Woods inadvertently hit the accelerator while trying to brake.Woods has no recollection of the collision, and there were no witnesses to the crash.Woods was not cited, Villanueva said, because under California law that typically requires either an independent witness or a law enforcement officer to witness the excessive speed. He said that Woods did not receive any special treatment, and nobody would be cited for speeding in a solo vehicle collision without any witnesses.Woods had to be extracted from his S.U.V. after the crash on the morning of Feb. 23 and taken to the hospital, where he underwent several surgeries on his right leg. Doctors not involved in Woods’s care have predicted an extremely difficult recovery from his injuries.During a news conference, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva showed a depiction of the path of the crash.via Los Angeles County Sheriffs DepartmentWoods crashed his car on a windy and tricky stretch of Hawthorne Boulevard that is known for car crashes near Rancho Palos Verdes, a coastal city in Los Angeles County. According to data collected by the sheriff’s department, there were 13 crashes, four with injuries, from Jan. 3, 2020, to Feb. 23 of this year within a 1.35-mile stretch of Hawthorne Boulevard that includes the site where Woods crashed.That stretch of road is also known for speeding. Deputy Carlos Gonzalez, the first emergency responder to arrive at the scene, said at a news conference in February that he had sometimes seen vehicles going more than 80 miles per hour on Hawthorne Boulevard.According to a diagram of the collision shown by the sheriffs department, there were four areas of impact. The first two were the sides of the median, the third was the curb and the fourth was the tree. Woods’s vehicle rolled several times before coming to a stop. After he hit the tree, his S.U.V. went “airborne” where it did “somewhat of a pirouette,” according to Powers.Before the crash, Woods had hosted a golf tournament in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles.Ryan Kang/Associated PressWoods was quickly taken to Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center, where he underwent emergency surgery, and then was transferred to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for follow-up procedures. He spent several days in the hospital receiving treatment, though there is still some confusion about the exact nature of his injuries.Dr. Anish Mahajan, the acting chief executive of Harbor-U.C.L.A., said in a statement the night after the crash that both bones in Woods’s lower right leg, the tibia and the fibula, had been broken in multiple places and were “open fractures,” meaning the bones had pierced his skin.The statement did not describe any injuries to Woods’s left leg, though Daryl L. Osby, the Los Angeles County fire chief, had said earlier that Woods had “serious injuries” to both legs.Woods underwent back surgery, his fifth, in Dec. 2020, just the latest injury to slow his golf career. He has won just one major golf championship since 2008.February’s crash is not the first time Woods’s life, and career, has been derailed by a car crash. In 2009 he crashed his S.U.V. into a fire hydrant outside his Florida home in the middle of the night. He was knocked unconscious and was taken to a hospital in an ambulance, where he was treated for minor facial injuries.But the incident is remembered mostly for what happened next and the fallout for his career. There were numerous reports of Woods’s infidelities and an apology in which he admitted cheating on his wife. He lost numerous sponsors and stepped away from golf for months. Woods and Elin Nordegren eventually divorced.Woods was also arrested in 2017 in Florida, after police found him asleep in his car on the side of a road at 3 a.m. with the engine running. Woods blamed the incident on the interaction of several prescription medicines, including Vicodin, and did not have any alcohol in his system. He eventually entered a diversion program for first-time D.U.I. offenders, and pleaded guilty to reckless driving.Captain Powers said there was no odor of alcohol, open containers or any narcotics in the vehicle or on Woods after the February crash. Woods told law enforcement investigators that he had not been drinking and had not taken any prescription pills. Investigators did not obtain or test Woods’s blood.Woods, who lives in Florida, was in Southern California to host the Genesis Invitational at the Riviera Country Club in the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles the weekend before the crash. Genesis Motor is a luxury vehicle division of Hyundai. Woods was driving a 2021 Genesis GV80 S.U.V., which was provided to him during the tournament; he is known for always driving himself in a courtesy car at tournaments.Sheriff Villanueva said at a news conference last week that the cause of the crash had been determined, but citing California privacy laws, said it could not be released without Woods’s consent. Woods eventually waived his right to privacy and authorized the release of the report. More