L.A County asks for Vanessa Bryant’s therapy records in lawsuit over leaked Kobe Bryant crash photos

LOS ANGELES — Attorneys for Los Angeles County have requested a federal choose to order Kobe Bryant’s widow to provide all remedy data courting again to 2010 in an ongoing lawsuit over leaked photographs of the positioning of the crash that killed the NBA legend.

In courtroom paperwork filed Friday, the county mentioned Vanessa Bryant’s remedy data are needed for its protection towards a lawsuit she filed final 12 months that alleges that county workers “confirmed off” photographs of the lethal crash that killed her husband, 13-year-old daughter and 7 others on Jan. 26, 2020.

Bryant’s attorneys didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark Saturday.

The county’s movement asks for “all paperwork regarding or reflecting counseling, remedy, psychotherapy, psychiatry or another psychological well being therapy supplied to Vanessa Bryant from Jan. 1, 2010, to the current.”

“The County continues to don’t have anything however the deepest sympathy for the large grief Ms. Bryant suffered on account of the tragic helicopter accident,” county lawyer Skip Miller mentioned in a written assertion. “Our movement for entry to her medical data, nevertheless, is a typical request in lawsuits the place a plaintiff calls for thousands and thousands of {dollars} for claims of emotional misery. I’ve an obligation to take this step to defend the County.”

Bryant’s lawsuit contends that first responders, together with firefighters and sheriff’s deputies, shared pictures of Kobe Bryant’s physique with a bartender and handed round “gratuitous photographs of the lifeless kids, dad and mom and coaches.”

The lawsuit alleges invasion of privateness, and claims that Vanessa Bryant skilled “extreme emotional misery” due to the leaked photographs that compounded the trauma of dropping her husband and their daughter Gianna.

“Nothing compares. Nothing’s near this. I misplaced my husband and baby. That was the worst factor possible,” she mentioned in a deposition recorded by videoconference final month.

Los Angeles County has soughtto compel psychiatric evaluations for Vanessa Bryant and others to find out whether or not they actually suffered emotional misery due to the photographs, and never due to the crash itself. Bryant’s attorneys argue in courtroom filings that the examinations are “merciless”; the county contends they’re “a routine a part of the invention course of.”

A choose dominated earlier this month that she wouldn’t be compelled to endure a psychiatric analysis as a part of her lawsuit.

Bryant’s attorneys had beforehand mentioned the movement was a part of the county’s “scorched earth discovery techniques designed to bully Plaintiffs into abandoning their pursuit of accountability.”