Vanessa Bryant Wins Kobe Bryant’s Crash Site Photo-Sharing Lawsuit

Vanessa Bryant: Vanessa Bryant overturns the court block to obtain the names of four Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies, who allegedly shared "unauthorized" graphic photos of the helicopter crash that killed NBA star Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna.

She claimed that the deputies, whose names were sealed in court filings, leaked the photos of the crash site on January 2020.

On Monday, Judge John F. Walter, of the US District Court for the Central District of California ruled that the names of the police officers shall be disclosed in the case filed by Bryant. The federal judge considered the claims of misconduct and decided to bring the names in public view. 

“Indeed where the case involves allegations of police misconduct, the public has a vested interest in assessing the truthfulness of the allegations of official misconduct,” said the judge.

The judgement came after Kobe’s wife called for the names of the officers to be released on an Instagram post in February. 

Vanessa Bryant lawsuit 

After nine months of the helicopter crash in Calabasas, Vanessa Bryant filed a lawsuit against the deputies at the accident site over the leaked photographs. 

"The gratuitous images soon became talked about within the department, as deputies displayed them to colleagues in settings that had nothing to do with investigating the accident. One deputy even used his photos of the victims to try to impress a woman at a bar, bragging about how he had been at the crash site. Mrs Bryant feels ill at the thought of strangers gawking at images of her deceased husband and child, and she lives in fear that she or her children will one day confront horrific images of their loved ones online", read Bryant’s lawsuit. 

Later, in February, Venessa Bryant demanded the sheriff's department to release the names of officers involved in the misconduct. The report claims that the names of the sheriffs were kept secret as they would be made a target for hackers.