Andrews thankful after jury awards her $ 55M
Sports broadcaster sued owner, operator of hotel and stalker after peephole recordings went viral
A Nashville jury Monday awarded television broadcaster Erin Andrews $ 55 million, to be paid by her stalker, a Nashville hotel’s management group and its owner.
The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for seven hours after the nine- day negligence trial. Andrews filed the lawsuit about six years ago against Michael David Barrett, a man who secretly recorded her through an altered peephole in her room at Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt University in September 2008, and the hotel owner and operator. A tearful Andrews hugged her lawyers, parents and individual jurors after the decision.
“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. “I’ve been honored by all the support from victims around the world. Their outreach has helped me be able to stand up and hold accountable those whose job it is to protect everyone’s safety, security and privacy.”
Andrews sought as much as $ 75 million from Barrett; the hotel owner, West End Hotel Partners; and the hotel management company, Windsor Capital Group. She also sued Marriott International, but Circuit Court Judge Hamilton Gayden dismissed claims against the hotel giant in late January saying that, among other reasons, the franchisor was not responsible for security at a local hotel.
Barrett is 51% at fault in the case, while the hotel owner and management company are on the hook for the remaining 49%.
Lawyers for the hotel operator and owner told reporters they were disappointed in the jury’s decision and they had cooperated with the investigation into the nude video. No decision has been made on whether to appeal. Marc Dedman, one of defense lawyers, said the hotel industry had changed as a result of the case, calling what happened to Andrews a crime.
The trial began Feb. 22, and the jury heard seven days of testimony. They heard from hotel executives and frontdesk staff; from hotel safety experts and a social worker and a psychologist; from a former NFL player who worked with Andrews; from the stalker and from Andrews and her parents.
Andrews described in two days of testimony how the videos going viral in July 2009 turned her into a shell of her former self and how she has devoted herself to her career as a way to cope and prove she is a professional, not the woman known for the peephole scandal.
The jurors also saw 4 1⁄2 minutes of video Barrett secretly recorded of Andrews nude in her hotel room on Sept. 4, 2008, while preparing for a Thursday night Vanderbilt football game, and a 6second clip he recorded of her in February 2008 at a hotel on the Ohio State campus. At the time, Andrews worked as a sideline reporter for ESPN.
Barrett tried to sell the videos to celebrity gossip website TMZ but was rejected. He then posted them online.
Andrews was unaware of the videos until they began spreading around the Internet like wildfire in July 2009, on the day she had been auditioning for
Dancing With the Stars. She now works for Fox Sports and co- hosts the dance competition show on ABC.
Barrett pleaded guilty to a federal stalking charge in 2009 and served 20 months in prison.
“I’ve been honored by all the support from victims around the world.” Erin Andrews