Vanessa Bryant, the widow of NBA legend Kobe Bryant, along with the relatives of several other people who died in the tragic helicopter crash last year, have settled their lawsuit against the pilot’s estate and the helicopter company.
The families of the passengers on the helicopter filed a settlement agreement notice with a federal judge on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. The details of the deal were not made publicly available. Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and six others, including the pilot, were killed in a helicopter crash on Jan. 26, 2020, amid bad weather.
Should the court approve the settlement agreement, the lawsuit claiming negligence and wrongful deaths would cease. The suit alleged the company didn’t properly train the pilot, Ara Zobayan, that his actions were careless, and that he should have aborted the flight.
Those who died along with the NBA star and his daughter were Orange Coast College baseball coach John Altobelli; his wife, Keri, and their daughter, Alyssa; Christina Mauser, who helped Bryant coach his daughter’s basketball team; and Sarah Chester and her daughter, Payton, as well as the pilot. Alyssa and Payton were Gianna’s teammates. The group was traveling to a youth basketball game when the helicopter suddenly crashed in Calabasas, California.
In February of this year, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the crash was the pilot’s fault.
The board concluded Zobayan flew into the clouds even though he wasn’t allowed to under the rules that he was operating under. Authorities did not find alcohol or drugs in his system during an autopsy.
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Seconds before the January crash, he reportedly told a flight controller that he was trying to climb to 4,000 feet to get above the clouds, but the helicopter was actually falling at the time. That remark is a sign that investigators pointed to in their explanation that he got disoriented in the clouds.
