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Jury selection begins for Vanessa Bryant lawsuit over crash photos

 More than two years after the helicopter crash Kobe Bryant's death, his daughter and seven others have begun jury selection in a lawsuit filed against Los Angeles County by the wife of a famous athlete in January 2020. Vanessa Bryant's lawsuit alleges that the county sheriff's office and fire department took photographs containing images of her deceased husband's body at the crash site and widely disseminated without her family's consent. accusing} .

of Vanessa Bryant's division of privacy violations trial that Kobe Bryant spent most of his career Lakers. 

Bryant is seeking compensation for an unspecified amount and alleges that his agent did not take the photos for investigative purposes, but rather shared them with firefighters who responded to the crash site. The lawsuit alleges that the agent showed the photos to bar patrons and the firefighter showed them to off-duty colleagues. 

The lawsuit also accused lawmakers of knowingly engaging in a cover-up plot to cover up evidence of the crash photos at the sheriff's request. News of their alleged agreement first came to light in a Los Angeles Times report published weeks after the crash.

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Vanessa Bryant and Kobe Bryant attend the Gala in Culver City, CA on November 9, 2019. Rodin Eckenroth/FilmMagic

"Mrs. "I feel sick at the thought of my husband and children." "She lives in fear that the day will come when she or her children will face horrific images of loved ones online."

The complaint noted that social media users and "internet trolls" claimed to have "seen pictures of the victims' remains" on online forums. 

“The number of individuals taking and sending inappropriate photos, the ease of sharing mobile phone photos electronically and storing them in cloud storage, the reasonable Their accounts are plausible given that they have not taken action to prevent the spread of their photos."

Vanessa Bryant
Vanessa Bryant, May 15, 2021. Maddie Meyer/Getty

Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and other parents flew to a basketball tournament. A chartered helicopter crashed in fog in the Calabasas hills west of Los Angeles. Federal safety officials blamed pilot error for the wreck.

Vanessa Bryant also sued her helicopter charter company and the property of her deceased pilot. She and her other family members, who lost her loved ones in her crash, reached a settlement with the helicopter company last summer.

The county alleges that Bryant suffered mental anguish from the death and not the photos ordered to be taken down by Sheriff Alex Villanueva. It was never published or otherwise publicly disseminated, and said the lawsuit was speculation about the harm she might suffer.

, it is a crime for first responders to take unauthorized photographs of the deceased at the scene of an accident or crime.

County has already paid her $2.5 million to settle similar lawsuits filed by two of her family members who killed relatives in the Jan. 26, 2020 crash. I agree with you.

Bryant did not settle her lawsuit.

The lawsuit was ugly at times. When she sought a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether she had received it, her attorney criticized the "scorched-earth tactics" that bully her and other family members of victims into abandoning them. litigation.

The county dismissed her case as "money extortion," saying it sympathized with Bryant's loss.

  • Los Angeles
  • Litigation
  • Kobe Bryant
  • Helicopter crash
  • California
  • Vanessa Bryant

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