A jury awarded Erin Andrews $55 million on Monday in her lawsuit against a stalker who bought a hotel room next to her and secretly recorded a nude video, finding that the hotel companies and the stalker shared in the blame.
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Erin Andrews won a $55 million judgement on Monday after the Nashville Marriott and a stalker were found liable for a nude video of the journalist that spread across the Internet.
The sportscaster’s original suit asked for US$75 million (AU$100 million) from the owner and operator of the Nashville, Tennessee, hotel where she was staying, and Michael David Barrett, the stalker.
The breakdown means that Barrett is responsible for more than $28 million and West End Partners must pay more than $26 million.
“I would like to thank the Nashville court, the court personnel and the jury for their service”, Andrews said in a statement she posted on Twitter.
“We’re disappointed with the outcome”, defense attorney Marc Dedman told reporters. Barrett was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for his crimes. Then it was up to jurors to decide if the hotel companies should share in some of the blame.
“All of us at Windsor Capital Group would like to apologize to Ms. Andrews for the unfortunate experience she encountered while she stayed at the Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt, a hotel we managed at the time”.
Nonetheless, Profootballtalk wrote that if the verdict stands, hotel owners could eventually declare bankruptcy or even just hand the keys to the hotel to Andrews since the lawyers didn’t manage to keep the Marriott corporate parent in the case. “That was the only way I was going to be allowed back”, she said.
Andrews said during the trial that the video still haunts her: “I think about it every day”. They continued on, stating that Andrews could not have been severely damaged by the filming, because she has benefited from the increased popularity and professional success that it has brought her, reports NBC News.
In a tearful testimony, Andrews said she wished her boyfriend had met her before the incident to know what kind of person she really was. The hotel chain was found 45% responsible while co-defendant Michael Barrett was awarded 51% of the responsibility in the “peephole incident” where he taped her nude in her hotel room. In his taped deposition, Barrett claimed that he had come across Andrews while searching Yahoo for trending personalities, and that he had tried to sell the footage to TMZ before posting it online.
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A packed Nashville courthouse had seen seven days of at-times emotional testimony, particularly from Andrews and her father, that wrapped up on Friday (AEDT).
