Erin Andrews Awarded $55 Million in Lawsuit

[Eugene]

Source: ABC News

The jury has awarded Erin Andrews $55 million in her civil lawsuit over the secret recording and release of a video showing her naked during a hotel stay.

The sportscaster's original suit asked for $75 million from the owner and operator of the Nashville, Tennessee, hotel where she was staying, and Michael David Barrett, the stalker who used a hacksaw to tamper with her room's peephole and record the video in 2008.

The jurors took photos with Andrews after the amount was announced, and she signed autographs, according to reports from inside the courtroom.

The jury found Barrett to be 51 percent at fault and required him to pay out more than $28 million. West End Hotel Partners, which owns and operates that Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt University, was found to be 49 percent at fault and asked to pay out more than $26 million.

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Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/erin-andrews-jury-set-deliberate-75-million-lawsuit/story?id=37460110

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By MEGHAN KENEALLY
Mar 7, 2016, 9:42 AM ET

[JI7]

1. GOOD

[Vinca]

2. Good for her. What they did to her was disgusting.

[Calista241]

3. it's symbolic i think

The disgusting piece of trash that stalked her isn't worth nearly that amount of money. I hope he has his wages garnished forever though.

[JI7]

5. i think this includes the hotel also

[lostnfound]

4. It is so absurd that we live in a society that awards

$51 M for nude pictures and sometimes little or nothing for wrongful death, like $1.5 M for the egregious and greed-driven Massey mine deaths, for example.

[jalan48]

7. I agree.

[scscholar]

10. Just shows how irrational CONservatives are...

about nudity.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

11. Huh?

1) How do you know the jury in this case were "conservatives"

2) Dismissing it as just being about nudity is fucking idiotic and shortsighted.

[bigwillq]

6. Any other cases like this that awarded a similar amount of money?

Did a quick Google but couldn't find anything.

[NobodyHere]

8. The filmer should've claimed it was just good Journalism

Like Gawker is doing right now

/sarcasm

[OldHippieChick]

9. While I am glad the jury found the

hotel partly at fault, I agree w/ posters above that this amount is pretty extreme compared, especially, to wrongful death decisions. I feel certain the amount will be lessened upon appeal and/or negotiation. It is a good wake-up call to hoteliers nevertheless.

[Jarqui]

12. I can't imagine the scumbag who filmed her is able to

come up with much money after being in jail for a couple of years, legal bills and being publicly known as a grotesque lowlife.

I like the award not so much as something Erin will ever collect (because it's bound to be appealed) but as a wake up call that will get noticed with broad media coverage.

I'm sure hotel staffs all over will be getting memos about their guests privacy.

What he did is obviously worse than paparazzi but some of the garbage paparazzi do bothers me. These are human beings who deserve some privacy.

[Lucky Luciano]

13. Why is the hotel at fault? nt

[Skittles]

15. not sure the hotel should have let him know what room she was in

I don't see how it was any of his business

[Lucky Luciano]

18. Oh wow - they told him her room number?!?! Wow. Yup - it is partly on them then. nt

[Jim Lane]

20. I think that's incorrect.

I haven't paid attention to the details, but my vague recollection is that no one outright told him her room number. Instead, he discovered and exploited a vulnerability in the hotel's phone system. He called the hotel and asked for her. He was, as per standard practice, patched through to her room. He had taken care to make the call from a phone that would display the number being reached, and from that information he could glean her room number. (Maybe it was something like the switchboard is 555-8000 and each room has a direct-dial number, so when he saw that his call was routed to 555-8257 he knew that she was in room 257. That's just an example of the sort of thing that might happen.)

If my memory is right, then the case against the hotel is much weaker than if a hotel employee had knowingly disclosed her room number. The issue would be whether the hotel knew or should have known that a room number could be discovered through such subterfuge and, if so, whether the hotel's duty of reasonable care required it to close off this (figurative) back door to that information.

[EndElectoral]

14. Glad Ms. Andrews received justice and 55M, but the Eric Garner family netted 5.9M.

Lest we forget.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/nyregion/eric-garner-case-is-settled-by-new-york-city-for-5-9-million.html?_r=0

Eric Garner Case Is Settled by New York City for $5.9 Million
By J. DAVID GOODMANJULY 13, 2015

New York City reached a settlement with the family of Eric Garner on Monday, agreeing to pay $5.9 million to resolve a wrongful-death claim over his killing by the police on Staten Island last July, the city comptroller and a lawyer for the family said.

The agreement, reached a few days before the anniversary of Mr. Garner’s death, headed off one legal battle even as a federal inquiry into the killing and several others at the state and local level remain open and could provide a further accounting of how he died.

Still, the settlement was a pivotal moment in a case that has engulfed the city since the afternoon of July 17, 2014, when two officers approached Mr. Garner as he stood unarmed on a sidewalk, and accused him of selling untaxed cigarettes. One of the officers used a chokehold — prohibited by the Police Department — to subdue him, and that was cited by the medical examiner as a cause of Mr. Garner’s death.

The killing of Mr. Garner, 43, followed by the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in August, set off a national debate about policing actions in minority communities and racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.

[olddad56]

16. good luck collecting the money in her lifetime.

[OnlinePoker]

19. 49% or $27 million will come from the hotel chain

I'm sure they will appeal.

[Old Vet]

17. A very sick and perverted person...................

Filmed this lady in her room (Iam assuming nude) and is awarded 55 million dollars Yet we have people who have sat in a jail cell there entire adult life found to be 100% not guilty, And they get a bus ticket home.

[mhatrw]

21. Yet the NSA still gets to play Santa Claus for every American citizen.

I guess the privacy of the rich and famous is more important to us than our own privacy.