L.A. County agrees to $28.85-million settlement with Bryant family over crash photos

Los Angeles County agreed Tuesday to pay $28.85 million to the family of Kobe Bryant, concluding three years of litigation that began after deputies shared graphic photos of the 2020 helicopter crash that killed the Lakers star, his daughter and seven others.

The settlement agreement filed in federal court also resolves pending litigation originally filed in state court and adds to the $15 million a jury had already awarded to the basketball star’s widow, Vanessa Bryant, after a trial in federal court last year.

“Today marks the successful culmination of Mrs. Bryant’s courageous battle to hold accountable those who engaged in this grotesque conduct,” Bryant’s attorney, Luis Li, 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.”

Mira Hashmall, the lead lawyer representing the county in the case, called the settlement “fair and reasonable,” and said that the $28.85 million — which includes the $15 million jury award —
resolves “all outstanding issues related to pending legal claims in state court, future claims by the Bryant children, and other costs, with each party responsible for its respective attorneys fees.”

Though Hashmall said the Board of Supervisors had already approved the agreement, a federal judge will have to sign off before the settlement is finalized.

In total, the county’s handling of the crash and its aftermath is expected to cost taxpayers just over $51 million in attorney fees, costs, verdicts and settlements paid to four families.

On a foggy morning in January 2020, Kobe Bryant, his teenage daughter Gianna and six family friends climbed into a helicopter headed for a youth basketball game in Thousand Oaks. A little before 10 a.m., the chartered flight slammed into a hillside in Calabasas. The NBA star and his daughter both died, along with Christina Mauser; Payton and Sarah Chester; John, Keri and Alyssa Altobelli; and pilot Ara Zobayan.

A month later, a Times investigation discovered that Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and firefighters had shared graphic photos of the crash scene and victims’ remains.

Then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva admitted that eight deputies were involved in taking and sharing photos, and that he ordered that the photos be destroyed. He said at least one of the photos was shared outside the department.

In September 2020, Vanessa Bryant and Chris Chester — whose wife and daughter died in the crash — filed suit, arguing that the unauthorized photo-sharing had violated their right to privacy and caused them emotional distress.

When the case went to trial in federal court last year, lawyers for the victims’ families showed the jury how disturbing photos had spread from the phones of deputies and firefighters at the scene to spouses, bartenders and first responders who passed them around in what one witness said amounted to a “party trick.”

“The truth is, the county has no idea, no idea who had the photos and who they sent them to,” Craig Lavoie, another Bryant attorney, told the jury.

Though the county’s legal team argued that first responders need to take and send photos to figure out what resources to dispatch to certain disasters, the lawyers stressed that the images were never published online or in the media.

After a few hours of deliberation, the jury awarded Bryant and Chester roughly $30 million.

But that didn’t fully resolve the legal issues. The federal court trial had only focused on alleged violations of the surviving family members’ civil rights. There were still state law claims — including invasion of privacy — yet to be resolved.

Those issues could have drawn out into months or years of litigation but, once approved in court, Tuesday’s settlement agreement forecloses that possibility.

Law enforcement agencies, particularly in Los Angeles, have struggled over the years with the unauthorized use of evidence involving celebrities.

The Sheriff’s Department launched a lengthy investigation into the leaking of documents after Mel Gibson’s infamous antisemitic rant during a drunk driving arrest. A Los Angeles police officer was fired in connection with a leaked photo of Rihanna after she was beaten by Chris Brown in 2009.

Testifying during the federal trial, Bryant said she lived in fear that the photos would surface someday on the internet. That caused her, she said, at times to have panic attacks.

“I don’t want my children to ever come across them,” she testified. “I have three little girls.”