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News Jun 23, 2021
Photo by Asia Society via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
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Vanessa Bryant has reached a settlement in her lawsuit against the company that owned and operated the helicopter that crashed in Calabasas last year, killing her husband — Laker legend Kobe Bryant — and their 13-year-old daughter, according to court papers filed Tuesday.
The settlement with Island Express Helicopters, subsidiary OC Helicopters and the estate of the pilot, Ara George Zobayan, also includes surviving relatives of the other passengers who died in the crash.
Terms of the settlement — first reported by TMZ — are being kept confidential, according to the court documents.
“The material terms of the settlement and releases are known to the settling parties and include that the terms of the settlement are confidential,” according to the papers filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. “The settling parties are currently finalizing settlement documents, which includes the necessary documentation for approving compromise of the minors’ claims.”
Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna died when the helicopter slammed into a Calabasas hillside on Jan. 26, 2020. Zobayan was also killed, along with six other passengers.
Vanessa Bryant filed her lawsuit against Island Express one month later, on the day a memorial service was held honoring her late husband at a packed Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. The suit — and others that followed by survivors of other passengers, alleged that the helicopter flight should have been aborted due to poor weather and visibility conditions.
Island Express subsequently filed a suit of its own against the federal government, seeking to lay blame for the crash on failures by air- traffic controllers. That litigation is still pending.
Zobayan was flying Bryant and the other passengers from Orange County to Camarillo for a youth basketball game, in which the retired Laker would have coached his daughter’s team.
Along with Bryant, 41, and his daughter, also killed in the crash were:
— John Altobelli, 56, longtime coach of the Orange Coast College baseball team, along with his wife, Keri, 46, and their 13-year-old daughter Alyssa, who was a teammate of Gianna on Bryant’s Mamba Sports Academy basketball team;
— Sarah Chester, 45, and her 13-year-old daughter Payton, who also played with Gianna and Alyssa;
— Christina Mauser, 38, one of Bryant’s assistant coaches on the Mamba Academy team; and
— Zobayan, 50.
An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board concluded earlier this year that Zobayan became disoriented in heavy fog that left him unable to discern up from down, causing him to crash the Sikorsky S-76-B helicopter. The NTSB concluded that pilot error was the probable cause of the crash, saying Zobayan believed he was ascending above the fog while he was actually descending at high speed.
Vanessa Bryant still has a lawsuit pending against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over photos that were taken by deputies at the crash scene and shared inside and outside the agency.
