Stalker definitely has to pay. Stalker doesn’t have 51% of 55million (presumably). Andrews gets a nice judgment to hang on her wall. There’s nothing for her to collect from Stalker. Not sure about the state laws, but in Texas Stalkers house and first car are protected from being seized and sold to satisfy a civil judgment. Lots of people who are negligent and commit a harm are not sued because they are considered “judgment proof”. You’ll win, but can’t collect on the judgment. So they are never sued in the first place. Andrews attorneys were going after hotel/insurance money and did a nice job.
That’s why OJ Simpson moved to Florida after his civil suit loss because the laws there are similar to Texas and friendly in protecting someone’s assets from civil judgments. And he had money.
You cannot put a monetary value on a moral wrong. It just doesn’t work. You can only put a monetary value on what is lost. Everything else is about punishment. And monetary punishment is relative to the ability to pay. You never want a company to get so large that it doesn’t feel the monetary punishment, or else that becomes useless.
So no, not every thinking person thinks the amount is objectively absurd. You’re just poisoning the well against anyone who disagrees.
The only thing absurd is that people have been paid less for wrongful death.
There’s a world of difference between “can I have the corner room on the 4th floor that overlooks the park” vs. “can I have a room next to Joan Smith”.
Why does a woman have to be a “celebrity” to have a right to privacy? Perfectly ordinary women have stalkers, crazy-ex’s, insane relatives, etc. It’s not about “special snowflakes”, it’s about safety and privacy for everyone.
If it hadn’t caused a problem up until then they were lucky - and actually, we don’t know that there were no problems before this, this is just the one that was publicized.
Holy shit - you’re telling people to google these pictures? WTF? These pictures were taken without her knowledge, against her will, and a jury found she was damaged by this and you’re telling people to google them? What the HELL is wrong with you?
Do you suggest people make obscene phone calls or piss in public places? You honestly saw nothing wrong with your suggestion to google that video?
And what does the photographic quality have to do with it? She’s only allowed to complain if the video is good quality, she’s recognizable, and you’re turned on?
Again - what the hell were you thinking when you posted that?
However, I could get behind awarding those folks comparable damages…
Many people regard a woman who’s nude photos are on the internet as morally suspect, loose, and less good, just as many people still blame rape victims for “asking for it” or not doing enough to prevent. They shouldn’t do that, but they do. And that’s the problem - not only can a woman be penalized by society for nude photos she didn’t consent to, many minimize the mental impact and social problems this can cause.
Nakedness in men is not seen in the same way as naked women, but I, for one, think that yes, a man unknowingly and unwillingly photographed in such a manner is also deserving of compensation.
Maybe not, but they should.
^ This.
I sued someone a few years ago and won - a much smaller award, but the problem is much the same. I was awarded seven times the amount the defendant owed me by the judge, in accordance with applicable statutes. All that did was allow to try to collect. It took a lawyer and 18 months to get anything at all. We could not get everything in one fell swoop because the defendant was broke (actually bankrupt, but she couldn’t afford to file for such). A payment plan was negotiated during a meeting with her other creditors. Monthly payments have been erratic. As the defendant has apparently treated the IRS in a similar manner she may be going to jail very soon, after which I will collect no more.
I’ve gotten about 1/4 of what was awarded, the lawyer took 1/3 of what was collected. That’s probably it, forever. I’ve been told by several parties that I have been unusually successful and fortunate in collecting that much, many winners collect nothing at all.
Erin Andrews may have been awarded $55 million - it is highly unlikely she will ever collect $55 million.
I would suspect that any decent regulatory system would cost a lot more then $55 million per year, which would be paid for not just by hotels which screw up but also those who do not. How many inspectors would you have to hire to inspect more than once every few years? Would they even have caught this security breach? If you can guarantee that no one would be hurt that would be one thing, but restaurants and food processors get inspected all the time and there are still problems. They know they can get sued also.
You’ve already heard how good hotels handle this problem. I’m sure no one will make the same mistake again.
If the hotel did it maliciously I’m sure there would be criminal penalties also. The case I described wasn’t malicious either - just careless. And maybe cheap. No one guarantees anyone a profit.
One of the problems in the United States, at the level of government and policy, is that many of the same people who argue for “tort reform” and an end to high punitive damages have, historically, been among the same people who consistently argue against tighter government regulation of industry.
You might be arguing that what we need is a system of better oversight and regulation, because it will work better than a sort of lottery that we get with the current tort system. I can see the merit in that argument. I have argued, in the past, that criminal laws should be expanded to encompass certain corporate behaviors that are currently shielded from criminal prosecution, and that regulatory fines (paid to the state, and not simply to a plaintiff) should be increased considerably.
Unfortunately, though, there have been plenty of people who argue that we need to get rid of both safeguards - regulation and punitive damages. In the absence of a regulatory system that provides for sufficient penalties and other deterrents, i think that having a system of punitive damages is, for all of its drawbacks, better than nothing.
This point isn’t what’s being argued. We’re arguing whether $55 million is an appropriate judicial award in this case. To me, it seems plainly excessive for what the hotel did (which I’m still not sure even ought to amount to negligence).
Question for our hotel people - are there surveillance cameras in the hallways? I’d think they’d be quite useful in detecting people trying to break into rooms and even for protection of the cleaning staff who work by themselves in rooms with the door open.
Someone using a drill on a door should show right up - if anyone is watching, and in any case knowing there are cameras would have been a deterrent in this situation.
Is that explicitly said anywhere? One of the articles I read seemed to say he just figured out where she was then asked for room number XXX for whatever plausible reasons.
Again, this incident was not a rare stroke of bad luck brought on by an unusual guest. It’s a predictable result of their poor security practices.
At my little celebrity-free 25 room roadside motel, I personally dealt with similar security issues on probably a monthly basis (and I generally manned the desk once a week).
If you do not institute the most basic security practices (I mean, my training on this was basically twenty seconds of being told “Don’t ever give out a room number, got it?”), then you WILL have a security situation at some point. It’s inevitable. And it’s entirely up to luck if that breach ends in a loud argument or if it ends in a shootout.
Guests are vulnerable in hotel rooms. They are often alone. They are in an unfamiliar setting. They don’t know where the potential weak points are. A hotel can’t prevent every single risk. But they certainly can take standard measures that mitigate the basic risks they routinely encounter.
You deal with committed stalkers motivated enough to alter a room peephole on a monthly basis? I take you at your word that generally protecting the security of your guests is a major priority to you, but I am not sure the mistakes made here warrant such a high award when it’s pretty clear this guy would not have been stopped by even above average security measures.
Should hotels just never allow people to request specific rooms? Should they ID everyone who enters a hotel in case they are stalking someone (as some Vegas hotels do at the elevator)? Should they eliminate peepholes and sweep for bugs on a regular basis?
While I think some of the criticism against Andrews has been pretty vile and unfair, I just don’t see how the award is justified beyond her being a pretty, sympathetic victim. It would be like arguing Apple should be on the hook for $5.5 billion for the icloud hack that affected over 100 celebrities. Does that sounds reasonable to you just because Apple had relatively lax security that was foiled by committed hackers, and a bunch of money?
If a computer company encourages people to put their data on a “cloud” then they should be held responsible for keeping that data secure. I wouldn’t have a problem with Apple being penalized to that degree, because it would motivate all companies holding data to do a better job of securing it.
I don’t much care one way or another but 55 million dollars seems a tad excessive for anything not involving loss of life or limb, make that limbs plural.
How much does Erin Andrews’ position as a female sportscaster in the male-dominated sports world rely on her being taken seriously in her job and not being seen as just a sex object? Her lucrative celebrity gigs on Dancing With the Stars, etc, hinge on her prominence in her sports-reporting role. How easily could that all be lost when nude pics of her are displayed all over the internet for the rest of her effective working life? I should think her potential income losses would come into play when a jury decides its award. Then throw in the punitive damages.
The hotel was hugely negligent in allowing her room number to be revealed to absolutely anyone who asked to talk to her on the phone. That’s mind-boggling stupid.
For Aceplace to state that it was her own responsibility to provide her own personal security force in order to not have video footage taken of her inside her hotel room is absurd. Not unexpected, in Aceplace’s case, but absurd. Of course, after this, she very well might have to, if only for her own peace of mind. That isn’t going to come cheap.
That is not what happened AFAICT. Feel free to correct me if I am misreading these articles, but what happened was that he independently found out the hotel where she was staying, then he called the hotel operator from an in-house phone asking to be connected to her. Because of a quirk in the phone system, he was able to see the room number when he was connected. He then asked for a specific room next to hers without mention of Andrews being next door.
Now it’s important to note why the system is this way. The point is that when you call from your room, the person in whatever area knows what room it is so they can respond to you by name, or know your room number when you order something. Obviously this system has flaws when someone deliberately uses this to gain information they shouldn’t have, but the main crime seems to be that this guy was somehow able to get to a house phone in the first place.
I can imagine there are circumstances where the above was a particularly egregious mistake, but it’s fairly telling this guys claims to have done this to more than 10 women. What can be done about this broadly speaking? Should hotels never connect you to a person or room when you call because some weirdo might spy on you? Should they never grant specific room requests? It’s not as if his gaining access to the adjacent room was actually material to his spying. Yes, it made it easier to avoid suspicion, but given he was apparently standing near her door for minutes filming her from the outside, having the next room didn’t matter too much.
Again, I can see how the hotel could possibly improve their procedures, but is that a $27 million mistake? I get why she is devastated, but why is this mistake one that should destroy the livelihoods of dozens of employees who had nothing to do with this?
I think that you are too hasty in attributing malicious intent to the jury that awarded the money. Punitive damages are supposed to be proportional, and it was the job of the lawyers to convince the jurors that the owners of the hotel had enough assets to cover the costs without going bankrupt.
Sure, that much money would wreck just one hotel, but we don’t know how rich the owners actually are.
Also, for those who like to talk about wealth inequality and the 1%, do you think that an average, typical non-celebrity person who suffered this type of privacy violation should be awarded $55 million (if a hotel could afford to pay)?
If not, why not? Isn’t this disparate treatment of wealthy vs. non-wealthy?
This. Exactly this, and I’m with all the others who said the same thing.
Does everyone remember Rodney King, the LA cab driver who was viciously beaten by police back in the 90s? When video of the beatings surfaced, it shocked the world, and subsequently led to the LA riots. King was left with broken bones, neurological damage, and trauma, and at the time of his lawsuit against the city of LA it appeared that he would be unable to work again for the rest of his life.
For this the city offered him about $1.25 million in damages. He took it to court, and with the impetus of international news coverage and the horrific nature of the beatings, he was eventually awarded $3.8 million.
But this woman – who frankly I’ve never heard of, not that it should matter one way or the other – is awarded $55 million because someone filmed her titties.
I think the above quote about the idiocy of juries is only a small part of the problem, although Dave Barry summed it up nicely in a sarcastic bit that went something along the lines of the jury looking at the plaintiff and saying something like “well, that was great, and now Vanna will show you what you’ve won – wow! – a matching washer and dryer, and an an all-expenses paid trip to the beautiful Hawaii Hilton PLUS a matching luggage set!”. I think the premise is that it’s all a big reality show and the number of zeroes at the end of the figure is kind of like decoration. The fact is, though, rationalize it how you will, that the cost of all these jury awards is a cost that ultimately is borne by everyone.
Actually, here’s the real problem with lawsuit-madness – the propensity for everyone to sue everyone else for all grievances, real or imagined. Figures like $55 million versus $5 million or $5 trillion may be hard to conceptualize, but here’s a figure that’s easy to understand:
The US has less than 5% of the world population, but it has two thirds of all its lawyers.