Citing a backlog of cases and coronavirus concerns, a federal judge has postponed the trial on a lawsuit brought by Kobe Bryant’s widow.
By Fred Shuster, City News Service
LOS ANGELES, CA — Citing a backlog of criminal cases and coronavirus concerns, a federal judge has postponed the trial on a lawsuit brought by Kobe Bryant’s widow against Los Angeles County involving photos taken at the scene of the helicopter crash that took the lives of the NBA legend, the couple’s 13-year-old daughter and seven others.
U.S. District Judge John Walter Friday also ordered the parties into a second round of closed-door settlement talks that could avoid entirely a trial now set for July 18.
“I really urge counsel to settle this case,” the judge said at the conclusion of a two-hour-plus pretrial conference conducted via Zoom. “I understand it’s a difficult case to settle … it just seems to me to be a case that needs to be settled.”
Trial was expected to begin with jury selection at the downtown Los Angeles federal courthouse on Feb. 22. Attorneys for both sides filed thousands of pages of briefs, motions and other documents after mediation attempts failed in June.