Los Angeles County Wants Vanessa Bryant and Others to Undergo a Pretrial Psychiatric Exam

Los Angeles County Wants Vanessa Bryant and Others to Undergo a Pretrial Psychiatric Exam.

Los Angeles County Wants to Force Widow of NBA Legend Kobe Bryant and Others Involved in Lawsuit on leaked photos of the helicopter crash that he killed him, his daughter, and seven other people to undergo psychiatric tests before the case goes to trial, court documents show.

In a motion filed in court on Friday, Los Angeles County argued that independent medical examinations are necessary to determine whether the emotional distress suffered by Bryant and others was caused by the leak of the photos or by the helicopter crash itself.

Vanessa Bryant’s civil lawsuit against Los Angeles County claims the photos of the January 2020 accident were shared by county sheriff and fire department employees in settings irrelevant to the investigation, including in a bar. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in September 2020, seeks undisclosed damages, alleging civil rights violations, negligence, emotional distress, and violation of privacy.

A “core principle” of the county’s defense is that “the serious emotional and mental injuries were not caused by the conduct of the defendants, but rather by the tragic helicopter crash and the resulting death of their loved ones,” says the judicial file. The county argues that the plaintiffs “cannot be suffering distress over photos of the crash site that they have never seen and that were never publicly released.”

The plaintiffs are seeking “tens of millions of dollars to compensate them for their alleged mental and emotional injuries,” the county says, and the medical examinations would help assess the “existence, extent and cause” of their “alleged harm.”

Attorneys for Vanessa Bryant and the other plaintiffs argued against the examinations, saying that a “complaint that merely claims damages for emotional distress does not place the mental condition of one of the parties ‘in dispute’.” They added that the county should work to assess emotional stress by “less intrusive means.”

“You don’t need an expert, and you certainly don’t need an eight-hour involuntary psychiatric examination, for a jury to evaluate the nature and extent of emotional distress caused by the defendants’ misconduct,” Bryant’s attorneys said.

The plaintiffs’ anguish “are the feelings that any reasonable person would experience if public officials charged with protecting the dignity of their deceased relatives took graphic photographs of the remains of their loved ones, used the photos for cocktail hour entertainment, and did not contain and secure photos “.

A hearing on the matter is scheduled for November 5, according to Friday’s court filing, and the trial will begin in February 2022.

Earlier this year, relatives of those killed in the accident resolved a wrongful death lawsuit with the company that owns and operates the helicopter.