I believe that I recall that damages generally cost companies more than deaths; car accidents, plain crashes, etc. Live people have medical bills. Dead people leave behind their belongings.
If the award includes punitive damages, then in order for them to serve as an effective deterrent, shouldn’t they be commensurate with the wealth of the defendant?
I’m sorry for your disappointment. 
I’d be absolutely mortified to learn there were naked pictures of me on the internet. It would be hard for me to even show my face again. I’m glad the jury sent a strong message.
I understand the defense suggested this probably helped her career, which I find extremely offensive and had I been on the jury, that alone would have boosted her award.
Reminds me of a minor scandal a while back in which a magazine publisher revised and reprinted material from a young woman’s personal website without her knowledge or permission. When the writer discovered this and complained, the publisher chastised her, saying that she should be grateful that her work had been professionally revised and then published in print and exposed to so many readers, all without any cost to her. Wish I could remember the name of the writer…
There’s a difference between requesting your honeymoon room or one that overlooks the park and requesting a room because you found out a celeb was staying in the next room.
Utterly and completely beside the point. The point is, however grainy and indistinct the pictures, calling somebody “self entitled” for not wanting them published on the internet is a shitty, victim-blaming thing to do.
The whole point of a franchise is that it’s run by a separate corporation and has separate legal liability from the main chain.
The franchisee pays the chain for the rights to use the chain name, the booking network, and so on. However, the chain has no control over the day-to-day management of the franchisee and is not liable for the franchisee’s mistakes.
It works the other way too: if the main chain gets into severe financial trouble and goes bankrupt, the franchisees are not in danger of losing their property to pay the debts of the main chain. They are separate corporate entities, and the franchisees are not liable for the main chain.
How dare she sue! She is not nearly hot enough!!
:smack:
The numbers seem huge, but the basic ruling seems reasonable given what has been shared in the media.
That’s not how joint and several liability normally works in tort law, which I assume applies here.
Each of the tortfeasors (in this case, the hotel and the stalker) are 100% liable to the plaintiff for the entire amount. She can enforce the judgment against whichever of the two she thinks most likely to pay, which I would assume is the hotel.
The apportionment of liability only comes into play between the two tortfeasors. If the plaintiff comes after the hotel for the full amount, the hotel has the right to go after the stalker for 51% of the amount the hotel has paid out to the plaintiff.
If the stalker can’t pay his share of the multi-million dollar award, the hotel (and its insurers) will be on the hook for the full amount owing to the plaintiff.
Clearly my use of self-entitled referred to Erin’s suit against the hotel. I fully support the criminal charges and prison time the stalker got. Her privacy was violated in a terrible way. I can see her suing the stalker and winning.
Hotels do what they can to keep guests safe. But the staff were manipulated and tricked by the stalker. Erin was only one guest among hundreds in that hotel that day. Expecting extra vigilant security because she’s a ESPN sports reporter is self-entitled. She can hire a bodyguard If she wants round the clock special protection.
Everybody knows security at hotels isn’t perfect. Would you leave cash money in a drawer in your room? Or expensive jewelry? Of course not because it might get stolen. Hotels are very big places with lots of people coming and going. Security can’t stand outside your door 24/7.
I expect you’re thinking of Monica Gaudio, who was ripped off by Cooks Source.
QFT
It doesn’t matter if she was a celebrity, or a woman stalked by an ex-boyfriend. It doesn’t matter that she sometimes wears revealing clothing in public, or if she had been a stripper. Try to understand this: a person has a right to decide when and how people see them naked; when they are in a hotel room with the door closed, alone, they have a right to expect to not be spied upon. This applies to everyone, even women; even women that are famous; and even women that you find attractive.
The hotel, through a poorly thought out system, allowed this person (yes, even attractive female celebrities that you would like to see naked are still people) to be spied upon by a creep. There was a trial and a jury decided that she had been wronged and was due compensation.
If it was 99% stalker / 1% hotel, the hotel would still be liable for the entire amount?
I still don’t see how the hotel is 49% responsible because somebody was able to figure out from the phones where a minor celebrity was staying and drill holes in her door. Yes, the woman in question should be able to control who gets to see her naked. But since I don’t know how this creep was able to figure out what room she was in, I don’t know what reasonable steps the hotel should have taken to prevent that.
Regards,
Shodan
I know what you meant. You can disagree with her suing the hotel. “I think she shouldn’t have sued the hotel” is fine. Calling her “self-entitled” is shitty victim blaming.
Yeah, that’s the one I was thinking of. Thanks! Here’s how the magazine publisher, Judith Griggs, responded to the Gaudio’s complaint of copyright infringement:
This line of reasoning didn’t work out very well for Ms. Griggs (who was quickly forced out of business by public pressure and legal threats by other victims), and I’m pleased to hear it didn’t work out for the defendants in Ms. Andrews’s case either.
How about not making guests’ personal information easily accessible through the internal phone system? Is that really such an unreasonable thing to ensure? (All the hotels I’ve ever stayed at in my life seem to have had no problem doing this.)
It’s down right embarrassing the lengths some posters are going to minimize her experience.