Refuse to accommodate her because she won a lawsuit? You’d be buried in social media blowback.
And you will have done nothing to reduce your risk of liability.
Just to point out: nobody watches a video like this because they want to see a video of a nekkid woman. There are approximately ten trillion consensual, non-blurry, high-quality videos of nekkid women on the internet. People watch videos like this because they want to see a video of a naked woman that was taken without her consent.
I’m not talking specifically about anyone on this thread - it’s perfectly possible that there are people who want to decide if the video merits the size of the award, and who lack the basic human understanding to get that watching it is an act of violation, or to give a damn about that. I’m just pointing out that no one has watched that video simply because they wanted to see nudity.
I haven’t read every post in this thread and so I don’t know if anyone has made this point previously.
But there is another good reason for Erin Andrews to have taken this to court and dealt with all the resulting fallout (and it sure seems like there’s been a lot of nasty and hurtful fallout).
That reason is that is places a big warning into the minds of people who would try something like this again. It’s bound to discourage people who would do something like this in future and who think it’s just fun and a big joke.
Many people will have to think twice before doing something similar and for that I think Erin Andrews deserves a big vote of thanks.
More than that, if you saw last night’s episode of American Crime Story - People vs OJ Simpson, it makes it real clear that people like Marcia Clarke and Erin Andrews suffer a huge amount of pain and suffering from all the humiliation they suffer.
I don’t know of any time that EA has displayed any of that pain and suffering in public, but it’s a real good bet that she has suffered plenty in private.
I think it has to be said that she was enormously courageous to take this action. It’s doubtful that she will come away with millions of dollars and slide into a life of ease when this is over - if it’s ever going to be over. As a matter of fact, this will likely never be over for her. It will follow her around forever.
She is a very courageous person and I would applaud her for taking this action.
It’s going to court. And he is suing for $100 million. I hope he wins.
When a hotel has one less litigious guest, their risk of being sued goes down. Your statement is the exact opposite of true.
As for blowback, what blowback? People get told there’s no rooms available all the time.
Your post looks to be written by someone who never owned or ran a business and have no assets to protect. Write back after you’ve been targeted by a lawsuit.
If you do the math, it’s quite simple and obvious. On one side, you risk millions of dollars. On the other, you simply say “Sorry, no rooms available” and have eliminated that risk.
Eclectic Wench wrote: “Just to point out: nobody watches a video like this because they want to see a video of a nekkid woman. There are approximately ten trillion consensual, non-blurry, high-quality videos of nekkid women on the internet. People watch videos like this because they want to see a video of a naked woman that was taken without her consent.”
I think it’s because they want to see a video of Erin Andrews. (I haven’t seen it.) Ten trillion? Really?
OK, I did the math. A hotel that has no rooms available has eliminated its revenue.
What makes a guest “litigious”? If any guest is spied on through a peephole in your hotel and his or her nude photos are posted on the Internet, your risk of being sued is effectively 100 percent. Barring any particular guest is not going to reduce that risk; only taking steps to prevent such invasion of privacy will. Refusing to accommodate Erin Andrews merely because she has won such a lawsuit has pretty much reduced your risk of liability by zero.
Celebrities have Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr followers. Refuse service to someone because she has righteously won a lawsuit is a far more tangible risk to your business’s reputation than renting Erin Andrews a room is a risk of your being sued.
li·ti·gious
ləˈtijəs/
adjective
adjective: litigious
concerned with lawsuits or litigation.
unreasonably prone to go to law to settle disputes.
suitable to become the subject of a lawsuit.
When someone has gone after a hotel in the past for millions of bucks, I paint them with the “litigious” brush. Crazy, huh? Maybe, just maybe, this person is more likely to sue my hotel?
As for your point about social media, you seem unable to grasp the concept of not giving additional reasons beyond “no rooms available”. It would be rather stupid to tell the reason, no?
Why not? We paid for it.
OK, now that I’ve said that, I wish I hadn’t. It really is a horrible crime she suffered and I shouldn’t be making fun of it.
Really, my only argument is that the hotel shouldn’t be as liable in this case as the court found them to be.
Pretty crazy.
How many times has she sued a hotel? Once.
How many times has a reverse peephole been installed in that hotel room, recorded her, and put on the Internet? Once.
How many times has she stayed in hotels? Countless.
She doesn’t meet your definition of litigious with regards to suing hotels. That’s just factual.
Shakespeare was possibly litigious. Erin Andrews, so far as you know, has brought one lawsuit which is possibly one of if not the the most justified lawsuit you can think of off the top of your head.
That doesn’t tend to show that she is prone to suing, reasonably or not.
Under that reasoning, you should never rent a room to anyone who has ever brought a lawsuit against anyone for any reason.
And when someone posts that famous sports reporter Erin Andrews was refused a room for no good reason or questionable reasons and finds a post on a publicly accessible message board from a hotel operator that suggests doing that very thing, how far do you think your clever evasions are going to help you when people start posting their suspicions? You’re going to wish you just gave her the room and said not a peep about it.
Fascinating example of what justice means in this society. Get horrifically violated, seek restitution through the means you’re supposed to, win, and some two-bit bedbug merchant is going to proudly announce to the world that if you show your don’t-know-how-to-keep-your-place cunt at his door he will proudly show you the door because that’s what it takes to feed your family and protect them from celebrity whores who should accept what they know they deserved anyway.
I personally wouldn’t rent a room to the one person who won the largest cash award of this kind against someone that rented her a room. Yes, I would lose out on her business. Not going to lose a bit of sleep over that. How stupid would you feel if lightning strikes again and she decides to sue you?
It’s a rather desperate argument to invoke the slippery slope and say never rent to anyone who ever brought a lawsuit. How about just the folks who win anything over $10 million? Yeah, I’d be perfectly fine with losing that much business, if I were an innkeep.
Yeah, and you would be just as justified to bar anyone who had literally been struck by lightning lest it happened again while he or she was staying at your hotel. But that doesn’t mean you’re acting based on a rational calculation of risk to your property.
There are ways to see if a given hotel has vacancy. If the website is showing rooms available, yet one person is told sorry no rooms, that wouldn’t hit social media like a tsunami?
Or make you liable to getting sued for discrimination. That’d be the biggest ironic self-fulfilling prophecy this side of Oedipus.
It is a horrible crime. Of course it is. Just imagine if you were her, how would you feel if one of your children asked you:
. “Why did people want to take those pictures of you?”
. "Why did you let those people take pictures when you weren’t wearing clothes?
. “Did you cry when you saw them?”
. “Did you get fired when they put those pictures onto the Internet?”
I’m guessing she cried plenty. Can’t imagine any other reaction. If someone ever did that to someone elses’ wife, daughter or sister, I would completely understand if they took the law into their own hands and shot the guy. It wouldn’t make it right. But it sure would be understandable.
Don’t you think?
Well, I guess nobody here has considered that she may have cried. I mean yeah, a lot of people are expressing surprise and outrage that she’s getting paid a lot more than most of us will ever earn in our entire lives over this utterly inconsequential incident (which, if anything, has probably helped her career tremendously, as I and a lot of other people would never have even heard of her if not for this).
But I mean, if it made her cry then of course it’s worth US $55,000,000.00.