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 of the 2020 helicopter crash scene that killed Bryant, his daughter and seven others.
In reaching the verdict after only a few hours of deliberations, jurors made it clear they had been persuaded by attorneys for Bryant and Chris Chester, who argued illicit photos of the crash victims’ bodies had violated their clients’ 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. “We’re here because of intentional conduct. Intentional conduct by those who were charged with protecting the dignity of Sarah and Payton, and Kobe and Gianna.”
Throughout the 11-day trial in federal court in Los Angeles, lawyers for Bryant and Chester documented how the photos spread: They were flashed from a sheriff’s deputy’s phone screen to a bartender in Norwalk. They were shown to firefighters and their spouses during an awards gala at a hotel in Universal City in what amounted, one witness said, to a “party trick.” They were passed from one deputy to another as the pair played video games.
County lawyers countered that there were legitimate reasons for first responders to take and receive the photos, including to help determine the size of the crash site and decide what resources were needed. The images, they say, were never published online or in the media — nor were they seen by the victims’ families because of swift work by sheriff and fire leaders in tamping down their spread.
“This is the pictures case and there are no pictures,” Mira Hashmall, an attorney representing the county, repeated several times in her closing argument.
But attorneys for Bryant and Chester argued it is unknown how far the images spread because the county did not thoroughly investigate. It wasn’t until most of the involved deputies had received new phones that officials hired a firm to conduct a forensic examination of employee devices.
“The truth is the county has no idea, no idea who had the photos and who they sent them to,” Lavoie said.
The laptop of one fire captain who took photos, Lavoie said, was missing its hard drive when it was examined. The captain, Brian Jordan, who has since retired, claimed under oath that he did not remember being at the crash site at all.
The phone of Joey Cruz, a deputy who showed graphic photos to a bartender in Norwalk, had been reset before it was turned over to the firm, Lavoie said. When it was turned on, it was as if it was new, with no photos saved. County attorneys argued that Cruz had transferred his data to his new phone, which also had no crash photos saved on it.
And the identity of at least one firefighter who received the photos remains unknown.
The nine jurors in the federal case must reach a unanimous verdict as they weigh the evidence presented to them during the trial, which included testimony from Bryant, Chester, Sheriff Alex Villanueva and several deputies and firefighters.
In order to side with the plaintiffs, the jury must conclude the sheriff and fire departments did not have adequate training and policies to prevent employees from taking and sharing photos of dead bodies for no purpose, or that there’s a long-standing practice among first responders of sharing death images for no legitimate reason.
In their closing statements, Bryant and Chester’s attorneys called into question the credibility of some deputies and firefighters who testified about what they did and why. Several gave testimony that was inconsistent with their earlier statements or was at odds with the testimony of other witnesses.
For example, Doug Johnson, the deputy who took photos that included close-ups of human remains, testified that he took 25 photos. But two other officials testified that Johnson told them he took at least 100.
Under cross-examination Friday, Villanueva said the fact that no photos have surfaced online proved internal investigators assigned to the case had done a thorough job stopping their spread. But his certainty wavered somewhat after appearing to learn on the stand about the discrepancies in Johnson’s photo count and the fire official who was never identified.
“I believe they were all deleted,” he said, adding, “I’m pretty sure that’s accurate.”
When pressed further, he said: “God knows — that’s about it.”
Lavoie told the nine jurors that if he asked them to come up with a percentage that would represent the chances that these photos would surface, he’d probably hear nine different answers.
“Whatever each of us thinks that number is, it’s definitely not zero,” Lavoie said.
And that means that for the rest of Bryant and Chester’s lives, one of two things will happen: The photos will surface, or they will live in fear about when that day might come, Lavoie said.
Chester’s attorney Jerry Jackson asked the jury to award Bryant and Chester up to $75 million in combined damages for their emotional distress. Bryant’s attorneys did not specify a figure.
“You can’t award too much money for what they went through,” Jackson said. “What they went through is inhuman and inhumane,” he said, gesturing toward the county, “and they did it.”
