Erin Andrews awarded $55 million by the jury

[OrlandoCuse]

i don't think that the argument is that she is entitled to more because she is a celebrity, i think the argument is that she was more damaged because she is a celebrity.

Is there a difference?

 

[leftytg]

I understand your point and I may have been too harsh in the fact that it was an act to get every penny possible. But it was so overwhelmingly obvious, that it just left a bad taste to me. We can see Erin Andrews 4x a week and she always looks like a million bucks and has style. But she comes to court looking homely and dressed like my Grandmother. I had to take a double take. I don't know, I just don't see the reason for it. She sold her soul, but wasn't trying to avoid serious jailtime. She was just trying to get an obscene and ridiculous amount of money that she probably wont even see. The moral of the story is that I hate the law games. Just put the facts out and decide the outcome. And its the money that drives me crazy much more than her look.

I understand where you are coming from, and I appreciate your mature tone and fact that you acknowledge you may have been too harsh initially. It is refreshing to be reminded that it is possible to have a disagreement on a message board that doesn't devolve into histrionics and name calling.

That being said, I still think you may be coming at this from the wrong angle. You start from a cynical presupposition - that Andrews is after a money grab - and you interpret her dress through that lens, leading you to conclude there is a certain amount of manipulation and misrepresentation going on.

I don't think that is fair to Andrews. It is uncontested that she was the victim of a crime. While you, and seemingly many on this board downplay how deeply offensive and humiliating it was to her to have her naked body all over the internet and the feeling of violation of having been spied on where she thought she was safe, it is also clear that Andrews suffered as a result of what happened. She is, in the most literal sense of the word, an innocent victim in what happened, a total non-consensual party. She (or her lawyer) also knows how the world works. People are apt to not take it seriously, claim it helped her career (an actual defense argument) or feel like she had it coming because she was attractive. If she shows up to court all made up and flaunting her beauty, she plays into those unspoken presuppositions. Her dressing down isn't so much cynically trying to distract and manipulate the jury, it is trying to remove a barrier and source of unfair judgment.

By way of analogy, I could show up in court in sweatpants. I basically live the entirely of my nonworking life in sweatpants (don't judge me!) and am more comfortable in them. Now, I'm the same lawyer with the same skills and same talents and abilities in that courtroom whether I'm wearing a suit or sweatpants. But I don't wear sweatpants because I know that before I say a word, I'm going to be judged as lazy, sloppy, and not serious. I'd be in the negative before I even started. My dress in such a case would serve as a distraction from the real issue. By wearing a typical suit, I start closer to even and take a distraction off the table.

Andrews dressing conservatively was designed to minimize the temptation toward "the hot chick probably loved all the attention deep down, I mean, look at her" take, which, as previously mentioned, is 100% offensive and inappropriate in this case as she plainly did not consent to being filmed. Her conservative dress wasn't obscuring truth, it was trying to avoid unfair characterization.

 

[tbonezone]

"The issue has nothing to do with the perp's request. It has everything to do with the hotel's granting it. The hotel maintains an implied responsibility for the privacy of its guests. "

are you saying that i'm entitled to 55 million$ if a hotel gives out my room # to my knucklehead coworkers ?
cuz i'm telling you that happens just about every place they send me ! and did erin tell the management she was being stalked and " under no circumstances tell anybody where i am ?" as if that would stop a stalker from figuring it out.
a 55 million dollar penalty for simply giving out a room number is ridiculous imo.

 

[victor]

a settlement is an agreement between the parties and takes place outside the purview of the courtroom.
Regarding a verdict, a jury can determine the amount. Andrews asked for $75 million and was awarded $55 million by the jury.

I heard 28 million is supposed to come from the perp who obviously does not have that kind of money. By the time the lawyers and Uncle Sam and others get their cut , she might end up with 9 mil.

 

[leftytg]

I heard 28 million is supposed to come from the perp who obviously does not have that kind of money. By the time the lawyers and Uncle Sam and others get their cut , she might end up with 9 mil.

right, that's what all the "joint and several liability" talk up thread was about. The jurors found the perv 51% liable and the hotel 49%. As the perv will never be able to pay that, she's out of luck collecting from him. That leaves the approx $26 million from the hotel, of which the lawyers will take approx 40%.

 

[CaptainJ]

As much as I'm known to love social(non hoops) discussion, am I the only one longing for the levity of JarHeadJim's take on internet babe issues as the icing on the cake?

To quote Glengarry Glen Ross right before the Alec Baldwin monologue, "The rich get richer, it's the law of the land". Pay attention long enough in life and you will recognize this pattern/frequency. You can see it in the first 3 seconds of the video below. As is mentioned later, the defense team apparently "couldnt close $***", and must have played like the Orange currently are, to have given up that amount... not unlike Connor McGregor after he took Nate Diaz to the canvass and was outwrestled like "a knife through butter", according to the announcer. As Connor noted, it's an expression of energy.

That leads me to wonder if they lost it before the trial in voir dire(jury selection), as further evidenced by the autographs afterward. I wonder if anyone ever wanted to sue a defense team for negligence to their society more than their client? The Baldwin character here needs to lecture the defense and maybe should have presented their closing argument. Their performance must have been as bad as some of the performances of small time teams/conferences Marsh has had to pound PBRs to endure watching late at night.

At least when Dan Rather got beaten down, we got a cool catch phrase and REM got a #1 modern rock Billboards single from it. Not sure how Americans would vote on that vs the video from this case. Too Bad Rather couldn't have sued the future where the guy had time traveled from and needed the frequency to get back to, or else he could have made a killing on the conversion due to inflation. https://popsongs.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/whats-the-frequency-kenneth/ (There were rumors he was somehow related to the gunman who sent Tee's Alma Mater into lockdown due to similar beamings http://www.timesunion.com/local/art...hours-of-terror-in-Lecture-Center-5961566.php ).

Just a thought, but this wouldnt be an issue if we followed the wisdom of the Ferengi and indigenous cultures, but what do they know?

 

[Capt. Tuttle]

I understand your point and I may have been too harsh in the fact that it was an act to get every penny possible. But it was so overwhelmingly obvious, that it just left a bad taste to me. We can see Erin Andrews 4x a week and she always looks like a million bucks and has style. But she comes to court looking homely and dressed like my Grandmother. I had to take a double take. I don't know, I just don't see the reason for it. She sold her soul, but wasn't trying to avoid serious jailtime. She was just trying to get an obscene and ridiculous amount of money that she probably wont even see. The moral of the story is that I hate the law games. Just put the facts out and decide the outcome. And its the money that drives me crazy much more than her look.

I don't think there is any amount of money to compensate you having your photo taken when you are naked then plastered all over the internet, if you dont want them there.
It's hard for women sports casters to be taken seriously if they are attractive, and that doesn't help.

 

[Czar]

This is a discussion thread, not a court of law. Please find evidence that there were zero murders and s e xual assaults in hotel rooms last year and I'll admit I'm wrong. Doubtful that is the case. I'm making a fairly reasonable assumption.

Did the hotel facilitate and help the murderer murder said person staying in their hotel?

Then yes, they're liable. If they did everything they could to prevent the murder, no, not liable.

 

[SUintheVille]

I wonder how much she will actually collect and how many years it will take to play out. The hotel is probably highly leveraged and will probably file bk. It will probably get appealed and then settled for a fraction of the award.

And then the lawyers swoop in for their oversized share.

 

[NYCSUGrad]

Any possible sympathy I had for the hotel went completely out the window after that waiter testified that hotel management was passing the video around making a joke of it.

Also, the guy asked the hotel what room she was staying in and if he could have a room next door and they freaking gave it to him -- F them. Imagine if Erin was your sister or wife and this happened to her.

This. Bad enough they were irresponsible by giving her room number out and him the room next to her, but to compound the error in judgment regarding her privacy by mocking her - just terrible. This certainly influenced the jury in making its award.

I do think the amount is high, as jury verdicts sometimes are, if you compare it say to what people get after being falsely convicted and spending decades behind bars due to police and/or DA malfeasance. However an appellate court is likely to reduce it.

Ultimately I think what matters to Andrews most is being vindicated and having her reputation restored.

 

[Capt. Tuttle]

And then the lawyers swoop in for their oversized share.

It's not, considering they front all of the costs and, if they lose, the get nothing for their time.
If you need to sue someone, and you don't know if you will win, or how much a jury will award if you do win, are you willing to personally write a check to cover the lawyers time, as well as the staff's, and front the costs and expenses. (Most good lawyers are going to be $300.00/hour or more)
Or would you rather share the proceeds, and shift all of the risks to someone else?

 

[Capt. Tuttle]

Did the hotel facilitate and help the murderer murder said person staying in their hotel?

Then yes, they're liable. If they did everything they could to prevent the murder, no, not liable.

They don't have to facilitate anything. It's a civil liability standard for an innkeeper. Did they owe a duty to the plaintiff? We're they negligent in some manner? Was that negligence a proximate cause of the injury suffered?
If so, in what proportion?

 

[Capt. Tuttle]

I heard 28 million is supposed to come from the perp who obviously does not have that kind of money. By the time the lawyers and Uncle Sam and others get their cut , she might end up with 9 mil.

No Uncle Sam, unless some is lost wages.

 

[CaptainJ]

Is this to say America thinks Nicole Brown Simpson's life is worth less(wasn't it $33.5 million?) than someone else's absolute certainty of privacy? What would aliens think? Will they migrate to our solar system based on their beliefs of the earth handing out such large payments? Or will they wonder why we hold hotels to much higher standards than our governments who enforce the laws and while actively breaking them on the largest scale humanly possible?

Is it also possible this video got more mileage from the majority of viewers which had forgotten about it, as well as all the new people who hadn't even heard of Erin Andrews and wouldn't have cared to search for her nude video before this? Maybe the almighty twitter can tell us?

And of course the most burning question, will any board members admit to their contributions to this story?

 

[CusefanATL]

I don't think there is any amount of money to compensate you having your photo taken when you are naked then plastered all over the internet, if you dont want them there.
It's hard for women sports casters to be taken seriously if they are attractive, and that doesn't help.

I totally understand that... but why not go for $100 billion? or $1 trillion? Because there is a limit. And $55 million (or $75 million) crossed that limit miles ago. Walter Scott was literally shot in the back and his family got $6.5 million. That "." in between the 6 and the 5 is NOT a misprint. $6.5 million vs $55 million is a very sad and embarrassing difference. I'm getting more disgusted with the amount by the second especially considering that the video only helped her career monetarily. I ONLY say that last point to prove that the difference between her and WS is NOT future income loss.

Thats not to say that Erin Andrews wasn't horrifically embarrassed and if I were her dad/husband/boyfriend, I may have tried to murder the guy and hell, the hotel workers passing the video around - but there is a limit.

 

[realorange]

About 20 years ago, a woman sued McDonalds because she spilled hot coffee on herself. The jury awarded her $2M plus which was later reduced. At the time, it was called the poster child for frivolous lawsuits.

Not saying Andrews case was frivolous by any means, but look what 20 years will do for jury awards, this time for something real.

 

[Ghost]

About 20 years ago, a woman sued McDonalds because she spilled hot coffee on herself. The jury awarded her $2M plus which was later reduced. At the time, it was called the poster child for frivolous lawsuits.

Not saying Andrews case was frivolous by any means, but look what 20 years will do for jury awards, this time for something real.

That was quite real, the coffee literally burned her pants into her skin. She almost died. Her legs, etc...were permanently messed.
But Erin Andrew's deserves 55 million.

 

[Cowtown]

Apparently the award was reduced on appeal to something in the $450,000 range. When I asked my cousin, who's a lawyer in Boston, why the initial award was seemingly so unreasonably high, he explained that the plaintiff first asked for a minimal amount, the intent of which was to get McD's attention to the problem of the too-hot coffee. McDonald's told them basically to shove off. So, again to get their attention they asked for more and they were similarly rebuffed several times. So by the time the case eventually got to trial, the defendant's persistent refusal to acknowledge the problem was interpreted as arrogance by the jury, and they got slapped for it. Especially when McD's coffee sales on the corporate level exceeded $1M/day. That's the way I recall him explaining it, anyway. I guess the moral to the story is there's always more going on in these things than we actually find out about. Snopes has a long discussion on the topic. Apparently it's been kicked around a lot and you have to dig for it. :noidea:

 

[Ghost]

Apparently the award was reduced on appeal to something in the $450,000 range. When I asked my cousin, who's a lawyer in Boston, why the initial award was seemingly so unreasonably high, he explained that the plaintiff first asked for a minimal amount, the intent of which was to get McD's attention to the problem of the too-hot coffee. McDonald's told them basically to shove off. So, again to get their attention they asked for more and they were similarly rebuffed several times. So by the time the case eventually got to trial, the defendant's persistent refusal to acknowledge the problem was interpreted as arrogance by the jury, and they got slapped for it. Especially when McD's coffee sales on the corporate level exceeded $1M/day. That's the way I recall him explaining it, anyway. I guess the moral to the story is there's always more going on in these things than we actually find out about. Snopes has a long discussion on the topic. Apparently it's been kicked around a lot and you have to dig for it. :noidea:

I think the award was punitive, and amounted to coffee sales for one day. FWIW, they have a good documentary on Netflix about the case, or did years ago.
They open with some on the street interviews, people make fun of her, then they give the details of the injuries, and everyone is shocked. I don't think ppl understood how badly she was burned.
Or that the coffee was hot enough to melt her pants. You're telling is accurate though, she just wanted a small amount for medical costs.

 

[AlaskaSU]

I think the award was punitive, and amounted to coffee sales for one day. FWIW, they have a good documentary on Netflix about the case, or did years ago.
They open with some on the street interviews, people make fun of her, then they give the details of the injuries, and everyone is shocked. I don't think ppl understood how badly she was burned.
Or that the coffee was hot enough to melt her pants. You're telling is accurate though, she just wanted a small amount for medical costs.

Pure nonsense. Water boils at what 212 degrees. Unless under pressure it does not get any hotter. It is almost impossible that it was boiling in her cup. Why did she spill the coffee; was it too hot - I doubt it given the Styrofoam cup. Her clothes melted. Too bad she wore polyester. Who deserves 50 million for wearing polyester? The injury was caused by the combination of polyester and heat. When did she spill it? Given that it spilled in her lap, she did not spill it until after she sat down. It was certainly not boiling at that time. Bullcrap case.

 

[CusefanATL]

Pure nonsense. Water boils at what 212 degrees. Unless under pressure it does not get any hotter. It is almost impossible that it was boiling in her cup. Why did she spill the coffee; was it too hot - I doubt it given the Styrofoam cup. Her clothes melted. Too bad she wore polyester. Who deserves 50 million for wearing polyester? The injury was caused by the combination of polyester and heat. When did she spill it? Given that it spilled in her lap, she did not spill it until after she sat down. It was certainly not boiling at that time. Bullcrap case.

(she didnt get $50 million)

 

[AlaskaSU]

Why does some random jury get to take out a personal vendetta against a defendant. The jury should be restricted to a determination of damages. People might not like Mickey D's, but the cost of lawsuits, in aggregate, is a tremendous drag on the economy. It is equivalent to an additional tax on employers, something only a Democrat could love.

 

[orangecuse]

The case should've been bifurcated. The 80-20 liability rendered likely would've been the opposite, if that at all. When damages are high and liability is quite questionable, this is a strategic tactic that makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, jurors see the extent of the injury and then play the math game accordingly. Especially, when you have a sweet 'ol lady vs. a huge corporation, let alone an iconic one.

 

[Ghost]

Pure nonsense. Water boils at what 212 degrees. Unless under pressure it does not get any hotter. It is almost impossible that it was boiling in her cup. Why did she spill the coffee; was it too hot - I doubt it given the Styrofoam cup. Her clothes melted. Too bad she wore polyester. Who deserves 50 million for wearing polyester? The injury was caused by the combination of polyester and heat. When did she spill it? Given that it spilled in her lap, she did not spill it until after she sat down. It was certainly not boiling at that time. Bullcrap case.

When? She was in the drive-thru. She was probably sitting already...I'm guessing.

 

[Czar]

About 20 years ago, a woman sued McDonalds because she spilled hot coffee on herself. The jury awarded her $2M plus which was later reduced. At the time, it was called the poster child for frivolous lawsuits.

Not saying Andrews case was frivolous by any means, but look what 20 years will do for jury awards, this time for something real.

That woman got third degree burns and the reaction to the lawsuit is why I rarely listen to people who don't have a J.D. after their name about tort reform.