Erin Andrews Seeks $75 Million In Peep Case

OCTOBER 15--In response to a judicial order, broadcaster Erin Andrews has disclosed that she is seeking $75 million in damages for being surreptitiously videotaped while nude inside a Tennessee hotel room, court records show.

Andrews, a Fox Sports correspondent who also co-hosts ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars,” revealed the eight-figure amount in a filing Tuesday in Circuit Court in Nashville.

In December 2011, Andrews, 37, filed a lawsuit alleging that Marriott International and several other defendants were guilty of negligence and invasion of privacy in connection with stalker Michael David Barrett’s filming of her at the Nashville Marriott in September 2008.

Andrews alleges that Marriott workers helped facilitate Barrett’s videotaping by first revealing that she was a guest at the Nashville hotel, then disclosing her room number, and finally by agreeing to Barrett’s request to be placed in the room next door to the broadcaster. Andrews, then working for ESPN, was in town to cover a Vanderbilt University football game.

Barrett, who filmed Andrews through a front door peephole, subsequently uploaded several explicit clips to a video web site, which prompted an FBI probe that resulted in his arrest. Barrett, who is also a defendant in the Andrews lawsuit, was sentenced to 30 months in prison following his December 2009 guilty plea to felony stalking.

With a trial date set for late-February--more than four years after Andrews filed her complaint--defense lawyers last month 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.

According to a scheduling order, lawyers for Andrews and the defendants expect the trial to take 10 days. In addition to numerous hotel employees, lawyers for Andrews have also identified witnesses that could testify about the emotional distress the TV star suffered as a result of the peephole videos.

Along with former ESPN colleagues like Chris Fowler, Craig James, and Jesse Palmer, prospective Andrews witnesses include several family members, agent Babette Perry, publicist Lewis Kay, and dancer Maksim Chmerkovskiy, with whom Andrews was paired when she was a “Dancing with the Stars” contestant in 2010. (9 pages)