In a filing in the circuit court for Davidson County, Tennessee on October 13, representatives for Fox Sports reporter and Dancing with the Stars host Erin Andrews filed a complaint—marked the third amended complaint—against Marriott International, West End Hotel Partners, the Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt University and Michael David Barrett, the man who went to jail for illegally recording Andrews in her hotel room in 2008.
The complaint, obtained by The Smoking Gun, is asking for “the sum of SEVENTY-FIVE MILLION AND NO/100 ($75,000,000.00) DOLLARS, plus costs and interest, and any other costs this Court deems fair.”
The Smoking Gun explains that Andrews filed her original lawsuit back in 2011, but with a trial date finally set for late February of 2016, defense lawyers sought a court order, “directing Andrews to provide a specific damages amount. The attorneys argued that Andrews’s claims were ‘unreasonably vague and ambiguous.'”
After Judge Hamilton Gayden granted the defense motion, Andrews filed an October 13 amended complaint including the $75 million damage claim.
There is little vague or ambiguous about Andrews’ latest complaint, which states Andrews “has suffered and continues to suffer from, including but not limited to, severe and permanent emotional distress, embarrassment, past and future medical expenses, and has incurred expenses and damages relating to the unauthorized use of her I mage and likeness.”
That wording appears in the complaint no less than six times, clearly making the case to the court that her distress and embarrassment continues to this day. One has to wonder how Andrews, or any woman, could trust that her privacy was being respected in another hotel room after this incident. Clearly the dollar amount of the complaint is a reflection of that, given Andrews’ job responsibilities constantly finding her traveling around the country.
The suit also states that Marriott employees, “were negligent in their acts and/or omissions by, amongst other things, revealing that Plaintiff ERIN ANDREWS would be, or was, a guest” then “by revealing Plaintiff’s hotel room, by facilitating BARRETT’S conduct by intentionally placing him in the room next to Plaintiff ERIN ANDREWS, and by failing to discover that Defendant BARRETT altered the peephole of Plaintiff’s hotel room door, thereby allowing surreptitious videos to be take of Plaintiff by BARRETT.”
In other words, someone who works for the hotel told some creep on the phone that Erin Andrews was staying there. Then, per the complaint, someone who works for the hotel gave that same creep an adjacent room to hers. Then, nobody working there noticed the guy vandalizing a hotel room door—not his hotel room by the way, but the one next to his where a very famous woman was staying—to swap out the peephole so he could record what was on the other side. No one apparently saw, or did, anything.
It’s amazing the guy’s plan ever worked. As Busted Coverage pointed out, Barrett got 2.5 years in jail in 2010 and was said to have admitted to recording 16 other women in the same way as Andrews.
After this lawsuit, Andrews could probably make enough money to own the Nashville Marriott. Not that she’d want to be associated with that hotel anymore than she has been.
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