Vanessa Bryant, Kobe’s widow, won’t have to undergo a mental exam, judge rules : NPR
Mark J. Terrill/AP
LOS ANGELES — Kobe Bryant’s widow will not must bear psychiatric testing for her lawsuit over graphic photographs of the 2020 helicopter crash that killed the basketball star, her 13-year-old daughter and others, a federal decide dominated Monday.
Los Angeles County sought to compel psychiatric evaluations for Vanessa Bryant and others to find out if they honestly suffered emotional misery over photographs of the crash scene and our bodies that her lawsuit mentioned have been taken and shared by county sheriff’s deputies and firefighters.
U.S. Justice of the Peace Choose Charles F. Eick mentioned that the county’s movement to compel an analysis was premature. Bryant’s invasion-of-privacy lawsuit is scheduled to start in February.
Kobe Bryant, daughter Gianna and 7 others have been killed Jan. 26, 2020, when the helicopter they have been aboard, on their solution to a ladies basketball match, crashed within the hills west of Los Angeles amid foggy climate. Federal security officers blamed pilot error for the wreck.
Bryant’s lawsuit contends first responders, together with firefighters and sheriff’s deputies, shared images of Kobe Bryant’s physique with a bartender and handed round “gratuitous photographs of the useless kids, mother and father and coaches.”
Bryant, in a deposition, had mentioned that “for the remainder of my life I will must worry that these images of my husband and little one will likely be leaked.”
The decide final week mentioned the county sheriff and hearth chief should give depositions within the case.
Attorneys for the county had argued that Bryant had by no means seen the pictures and so they weren’t shared publicly and wished to find out whether or not she really had suffered emotional misery.
That they had sought to require Bryant and different relations of the individuals who have been killed within the crash, together with kids, to bear psychiatric evaluations as impartial medical examinations.