Jury in Kobe Bryant photos case urged to award $75 million to his widow and co-plaintiff

LOS ANGELES – On the 44th anniversary of the birth of NBA legend Kobe Bryant, an attorney for his widow, Vanessa, asked a jury in federal court here Tuesday to deliver justice on behalf of him and his daughter more than two years after their deaths.

This was the 10th day of Vanessa Bryant’s civil trial against Los Angeles County, another day of tears for her and the final day of testimony after hearing from dozens of witnesses. It was also the first day of closing arguments and the first time an attorney in the case put a dollar amount on what he wants the jury to award Bryant and Chris Chester, her fellow plaintiff at this trial:

$75 million.

Chester’s attorney, Jerome Jackson, asked for up to $2.5 million each for their past 2.5 years of emotional distress, plus up to $1 million for each year of their future distress – 40 years for Bryant and 30 for Chester.

“When I reach this point of closing arguments, I’m usually anxious about not asking for too much,” Jackson told the jury in closing arguments. “I don’t have that anxiety today, because I will tell you ladies and gentlemen, you can’t award too much money for what they went through. You can’t stack it too high. You can’t spread it too wide. What they went through is inhuman and inhumane.”

Bryant has not asked for a specific amount.

Both she and Chester brought this case to trial after suing the county in 2020, several months after they each lost spouses and daughters in a helicopter crash that killed all nine aboard in Calabasas, California. They are not blaming the county for the crash itself but what happened afterward. They both accused county sheriff’s and fire department employees of using their personal phones to take graphic photos of their deceased loved ones at the crash scene despite not having legitimate business reason for doing so.

The county says the photos never were posted online and were deleted shortly after the crash. But Bryant and Chester say they live in fear of the photos resurfacing because there’s no way to be sure if they still exist somewhere, ready to pop up at any moment.

"Forty-four years ago today, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Kobe Bryant was born,” Bryant’s attorney, Craig Jennings Lavoie, told the jury as he began his closing argument. “Today is his birthday. It’s an honor to stand here representing Mrs. Bryant asking for justice and accountability on his behalf, and her behalf, and on behalf of their daughter Gianna, who would be 16 if she was still here with us.”

TRIAL COVERAGE: Vanessa Bryant gives emotional testimony

CRASH PHOTOS: Trial has been graphically gruesome. Does it have to be?

Bryant wore black to the trial Tuesday and made her first public Instagram post since the trial began Aug. 10. It was a photo of her and Kobe with a comment:

“Happy birthday, baby! I love you and miss you so much!”

Closing arguments

Her remembrance soon turned to sadness in court, where the trial is nearing an end. After closing arguments resume Wednesday morning, the jury of five men and four women will be tasked with making a series of decisions about the case:

►Did these county first responders violate Bryant’s and Chester’s constitutional privacy rights under the Fourteenth Amendment by publicly disseminating these crash-scene photos, allegedly because they wanted to use them as “souvenirs” or objects of amusement?

►If so, is the county liable for it as an organization?

►And if that’s the case, how much should the jury award them in exchange for their past and future emotional distress?

Jennings Lavoie walked the jury through key points of the evidence in the trial, including the conflicting statements of those who took and shared the photos, as well as the two main public incidents at which county workers shared crash-scene photos. One involved fire captain Tony Imbrenda showing crash photos at an awards gala in February 2020, when a witness testified she overheard that the photos included an image of Kobe’s “burnt-up” body, which Imbrenda denied at trial.