Jurors should consider why photos of Bryant crash were destroyed, lawyer says

Lawyers representing Vanessa Bryant said that jurors should be allowed to infer at trial that the destruction of evidence by deputy sheriffs, namely photos of her husband's January 2020 helicopter crash site, is unfavorable to the County of Los Angeles defendants.

If the jury sides with the plaintiffs' theory of the county's alleged bad faith destruction of evidence, then those findings make it more likely that the photos actually did depict human remains and were widely shared, in violation of plaintiffs' civil rights, reads a motion for spoliation sanctions filed Monday by Luis Li, partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC, who represents Vanessa Bryant.

"Given defendants' persistent, widespread and egregious spoliation, the jury should be instructed that it may presume that the evidence the defendants spoliated -- both the photos county personnel took and shared and the devices on which they did so -- was unfavorable to defendants with respect to the content, number and spread of the photos, and the court should make the same inference in ruling on any motion by defendants for summary judgment," Li wrote.

Destroying the photos deprived the plaintiffs the opportunity to find out what the photos depicted, which victims were photographed, how many pictures were taken or how widely the photos were shared, Li's motion states.

Los Angeles County's lawyer, Skip Miller of Miller Barondess, argued that the sheriff's goal was to ensure no photos would be disseminated beyond official departmental use. The pictures mostly depicted helicopter debris rather than human remains; photos were taken for law enforcement purposes; and at the end of the day, the county has no control over the majority of the personnel's mobile devices, Miller wrote in court papers.

Several of the deputies routinely upgraded to new cellphones months after the helicopter crash, contrary to Bryant's argument that the alleged perpetrators destroyed their devices to conceal their conduct, Miller argued.

The plaintiffs' motion for spoliation sanctions stems from a civil rights and privacy invasion case filed against the County of Los Angeles' sheriff and fire department last fall. Bryant alleged that agency officials took photos of human remains and shared them with others on personal mobile devices.

The helicopter crash occurred in January 2020. County personnel took steps to destroy the evidence and Sheriff Alex Villanueva ordered his employees to delete the photos after receiving a citizen's complaint that a deputy was showing photos at a bar in Norwalk, according to the complaint. A Fire Department captain had also shared pictures at an awards dinner, then deleted the photos, according to the plaintiffs.

The case is Bryant et al. v. County of Los Angeles et al., 2:20-cv-9582 (C.D. Cal., filed Oct. 19, 2020). The matter is assigned to U.S. Judge John F. Walter of the Central District of California. The hearing on the spoliation motion is scheduled for Nov. 29.