L.A. County Wants Vanessa Bryant To Take Psychiatric Exam To Prove She Was Distressed Over Kobe Bryant Crash Photos

Vanessa Bryant, whose husband Kobe Bryant and 13-year-old daughter Gianna died in a tragic helicopter crash in January 2020, is being asked to take a psychiatric exam to prove that she suffered emotional distress after photos of the crash scene were leaked by police.

Insider reported that Los Angeles County, which is being sued by Bryant, is demanding that Bryant and the family members, including children, of other crash victims take the psychiatric exam. Bryant’s attorneys wrote in a court filing that the county is seeking psychiatric evaluations for family members of other crash victims. Including “four teenagers, a 10-year-old child, and a 5-year-old kindergartener.”

“Plaintiffs cannot claim that they are suffering from ongoing depression, anxiety and severe emotional distress and then balk at having to support their claims,” the county wrote in a motion, according to NBC News.

Attorneys for Bryant in their own court filing called the county’s demands an attempt at “scorched-earth discovery tactics designed to bully Plaintiffs into abandoning their pursuit of accountability.”

The county, according to NBC, is arguing that it was the crash itself that caused Bryant emotional distress and not crash photographs leaked by police and paparazzi.

In return, Bryant’s attorneys argue that “It does not take an expert—and it certainly does not take an involuntary eight-hour psychiatric examination—for a jury to assess the nature and extent of the emotional distress caused by Defendants’ misconduct.”

In March, Insider reported, Bryant “won a lawsuit to get the names of four officers who allegedly took pictures of the crashed helicopter.” She later posted the names of the officers on Instagram.

As The Daily Wire previously reported, Bryant also won a wrongful death lawsuit in June against the helicopter company. From The Daily Wire:

The wrongful death lawsuit following the accident that killed NBA legend Kobe Bryant in January 2020, was settled on Tuesday. Vanessa Bryant, who filed the suit along with members of the families of the seven other people killed in the January helicopter crash, agreed to settle the lawsuit against the pilot and the helicopter company. 

According to the L.A. Times, “the helicopter company and insurers filed ‘joint notice of settlement and joint request to vacate discovery deadlines’ documents with the court on Tuesday.”

It is also not the first time Los Angeles County has taken an adversarial approach to Bryant, a grieving widow. In May of this year, The Daily Wire reported, the county argued that Bryant had taken a “straightforward” case and turned