LA County is Requesting Vanessa Bryant’s Therapy Records in Lawsuit Over Leaked Helicopter Crash Site Photos

In ongoing litigation over stolen images of the crash site where Kobe Bryant was killed, Los Angeles County attorneys have requested a federal judge to require Kobe Bryant’s widow to submit all therapy records dating back to 2010.

Vanessa Bryant’s therapy records were requested for the county’s defense against a lawsuit she filed last year alleging that county employees “showed off” photos of the deadly crash that killed her husband, 13-year-old daughter, and seven others on Jan. 26, 2020.

The county’s motion is asking for “all documents relating to or reflecting counseling, therapy, psychotherapy, psychiatry or any other mental health treatment provided to Vanessa Bryant from Jan. 1, 2010, to the present.”

“The County continues to have nothing but the deepest sympathy for the enormous grief Mrs. Bryant suffered as a result of the tragic helicopter accident,” county attorney Skip Miller said in a written statement. “Our motion for access to her medical records, however, is a standard request in lawsuits where a plaintiff demands millions of dollars for claims of emotional distress. I have an obligation to take this step to defend the County.”

According to Bryant’s lawsuit, first responders, including firefighters and sheriff’s deputies, shared photos of Kobe Bryant’s body with a bartender and distributed “gratuitous photos of the dead children, parents, and coaches.”

The lawsuit states that Vanessa Bryant allegedly suffered “severe emotional distress” as a result of the stolen images, according to the lawsuit, which exacerbated the grief of losing her husband and their daughter Gianna.

Last month she said during a recorded video conference, “Nothing compares. Nothing’s close to this. I lost my husband and child. That was the worst thing imaginable.”

Vanessa Bryant and others have been ordered to undergo mental evaluations by Los Angeles County to establish whether their emotional disturbance was caused by the images rather than the crash itself. Bryant’s lawyers claim the examinations are “cruel,” but the county claims they are “a routine part of the discovery process.”

As part of her complaint, a judge ordered earlier this month that she would not be forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

The move was part of the county’s “scorched earth discovery tactics designed to bully Plaintiffs into abandoning their pursuit of accountability.”