One year later: the legal landscape left in the wake of Kobe Bryant's tragic death.

A helicopter with nine people aboard crashed into the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains this time last year. All nine individuals who were on the helicopter instantly died, including Kobe Bryant and his daughter. Since then, the family members left behind have filed a flurry of lawsuits that leave questions about what happened and who’s at fault unanswered.

Vanessa Bryant was the first to file a wrongful death action against the pilot’s estate and his employer, Island Express. A personal administrator can bring an action on behalf of a decedent’s estate when another’s tortious conduct proximately caused the decedent to die. That’s called a wrongful death action. Some theory of liability must underpin the lawsuit; and often that theory is negligence.

Vanessa Bryant’s lawsuit alleges that the pilot flew the helicopter in poor visibility without authorization to fly under those conditions, that the pilot failed to obtain proper weather data before takeoff, and that the pilot failed to abort the flight once it became apparent that the conditions were not safe for flight. Island Express is a defendant because an employer is vicariously liable for the actions of its employee when the employee commits a tort while on the job. The families of other passengers on the helicopter filed similar lawsuits against Island Express.

Mrs. Bryant filed the actions in California Superior Court in Los Angeles County. However, Island Express responded to the complaint with a cross-complaint against the air traffic controllers, and since they are federal employees, the United States District Court for the Central District of California obtained jurisdiction over the lawsuits. Island Express claims that the air traffic controllers were one of the many reasons for the crash, contending that one of the controllers failed to properly terminate radar services and failed to notify an incoming controller of the helicopter’s presence before changing shifts. The estates of the passengers moved to dismiss the cross-complaint, and a federal judge will hear those motions on 8 April 2021. If the judge grants the dismissal, then the case will transfer back to state court in Los Angeles.

That’s where things stand with the wrongful death actions.

Mrs. Bryant also filed an action against Sheriff Alex Villanueva and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, alleging that the department’s unauthorized release of crash scene photographs was an invasion of her family’s privacy and caused her to suffer severe emotional distress. I wrote about the potential for such lawsuits in a blog post last year.

This action is also still in pretrial stages. However, California’s governor signed into law legislation effective 1 January 2021 that makes it a criminal offense for first responders to take photos of deceased individuals at a crime or accident scene for any purpose other than official law enforcement duties.

We will closely monitor the progress of these lawsuits going forward.