Lawyers seek $75 million in damages for Vanessa Bryant, co-defendant – Reading Eagle

Kobe Bryant’s widow, Vanessa, and her co-defendant deserve $75 million in damages for the emotional distress they suffered in the months after first responders took gruesome photos of the helicopter crash that killed their loved ones, their lawyer says. . .

The NBA superstar, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others died in January 2020 after their helicopter crashed into a hillside in Calabasas, California. Months later, Vanessa Bryant and Christopher Chester, a financial advisor who lost his wife Sarah and teenage daughter Peyton in the crash, sued Los Angeles County, alleging that emergency responders improperly photographed the charred wreckage of the helicopter, as well as body parts. scattered across the stage.

Jurors are expected to begin deliberating in the case on Wednesday.

Vanessa and Chester testified during the 10-day trial which is ongoing anxiety they collide knowing that the drawings bodies can appear online at any moment. Among the witnesses was also a deputy who stated that he showed naturalistic pictures from the scene while at the bar and another first responder who shared multiple photos with someone he didn’t know.

During closing arguments Tuesday, which also marked what would have been Kobe’s 44th birthday, attorneys for the first time valued the couple’s pain and suffering in monetary terms. Jerome Jackson, Chester solicitor, asked up to $2.5 million to each for the past 2.5 years of emotional distress, plus $100,000 to $1 million for each year of future suffering — 40 years for Bryant and 30 for Chester, according to CNN.

“You can’t award too much money for what they went through,” Jackson told jurors. “What they went through is inhumane and inhumane.”

Vanessa’s attorney, Craig Jennings Lavoie, did not seek a specific amount of damages, USA Today reported.

“Forty-four years ago today, Kobe Bryant was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” Lavoie told the jury. “Today is his birthday. It is an honor to stand here representing Mrs. Bryant and demand justice and accountability on his behalf, on her behalf, and on behalf of their daughter, Gianna, who would be 16 if she were still here with us.”

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