Erin Andrews Lawsuit Seeks To Answer a $75 Million Dollar Question

Erin Andrews deserves every penny of that $75 million lawsuit against Marriott. Erin Andrews is a phony, and this was the best thing that ever happened to her. She shouldn’t get a dime. I’m not even sure those two polar opposite statements regarding the “World’s #1 Sideline Reporter” (Note: Not a real title, but I am making it up!) actually cancel each other out.

There are surely merits to both sides.

Personally, I still think she should OWN that Marriott in Nashville where the peephole video was taken. Her stalker, Michael David Barrett, actually ASKED for a room next to hers, and was granted that room! I mean, come on! This is “Hotel 101” isn’t it? You don’t do that, unless the person you are travelling with is STANDING right next to you at the check-in desk and says it’s okay, right?

The Tennessean.com has detailed breakdown of trial, including this important nugget….

In what could be key testimony, Fred Del Marva, a private investigator with a specialty in hospitality industry security and liability, said the Nashville Marriott violated standards of care by identifying Andrews as a hotel guest. He called releasing her room number “grossly inadequate” and the “cardinal sin” of hospitality.

The hotel also did not have hallway surveillance cameras, or a properly staffed security detail. They also didn’t do much checking of the peepholes, but apparently now hotels are equipping the inside of the rooms with “peephole flaps” that are virtually undefeatable by anybody trying to modify from the outside.

@czabe the Erin Andrews privacy mechanism is on the peep hole at your favorite Hyatt Hotels. pic.twitter.com/iFkQrcWCmN

— Craig Donaldson (@donacraig_craig) February 24, 2016

But then again, attorneys for the hotel make two key points. One, they remind the jury that Barrett schemed to defraud the hotel, and as such HE should be the one held solely liable. Also, they contend that actual harm to Ms. Andrews career is hard to pinpoint, at best. Much less harm in the form of $75 million!

While no doubt the episode was highly un-nerving to Andrews and her family, so too could be an episode of a drunken horny dude-bro cornering her at a restaurant, asking for a selfie. I think the key question comes down to whether or not an unapproved, uncompensated, out of focus, vignetted peep-hole video was GOOD or BAD for her career.

I know this: it surely wasn’t BAD. No. No, way.

Now maybe her career arc to being what I would consider a “B+”-list TV celebrity would have been the same, without the video. I tend to think not. Not only did the incident garner immediate and widespread sympathy for her, but it also set the stage for a “I’m going to be STRONG and GET OVER THIS narrative” that Andrews wisely picked up and ran with.

Also, she looked fantastic in that peephole video curling her hair, in nothing but a birthday suit! (Ahem, or so I am told.. ahem.)

A worse look for her line of work, would have been her hunched over an In-N-Out “Triple-Triple” stuffing her face, wearing frumpy sweatpants. This, was not a bad look.

Certainly in the intervening months and years since the incident, Andrews has been WELL PHOTOGRAPHED and been more than willing to give an interview. I mean, other than the piece’s she’s sat down with for…

• Health.com
• Shape.com
• Men’s Health
• US Magazine
• Elle
• Redbook

… and I’m sure a few others (I just got bored Google-searching)…. it doesn’t SEEM like that whole incident did much to derail her celebrity ambitions.

I’m still an Erin Andrews fan, both of her look and generally her work. I think she deserves some cash out of this. If she gets nothing, then too bad for her and her lawyers. I know this, though: there are a busload of young female sideline reporters who are hungry enough for her level of fame and fortune, that they would endure far worse than a little internet-spread viral peephole dance.

It doesn’t make those women right, it is just a reality of the job, and the business.

Television is a world for the pretty, and the skinny. And if a job in sports broadcasting is no more complicated than shoving a mic into a coaches face and asking: “So, what halftime adjustments does your team need to make?” then producers are likely going to hire the most blood-flowingly good looking women they can find for the job.

In the meantime, tape those peepholes and your webcam on that laptop. You never know who’s watching!