Erin Andrews’ peephole-video trial against hotel begins

Barrett had pleaded guilty in 2009 in Los Angeles federal court to reserving rooms next to ones in which Andrews was staying at in three different cities, and placing recording devices in the reporter’s peepholes in Nashville and in Columbus, Ohio.

Erin Andrews was filmed through a peephole while staying at a hotel and the video was placed online in 2008 and she’s now suing the hotel where she was staying while she was filmed. While the hotel didn’t take an active part in filming Erin, her attorney, Randall Kinnard, says hotel employees should have known better than to freely give away guest details.

Barrett, an insurance company manager at the time of his creepy crime, was sentenced to 30 months behind bars. Circuit Court Judge Hamilton Gayden is hearing the case. She is seeking $75 million, citing the personal distress and humiliation of the video’s release.

The court resumes tomorrow morning and the trial is expected to last 10 days. Those words, Kinnard said, were not used, as Barrett called the Nashville Marriott to request Erin Andrews room number.

Attorneys for Andrews and a Marriott hotel delivered their opening statements in a Nashville courthouse Tuesday.

“You violated me and you violated all women”, Andrews told Barrett at the time. Documents obtained from the original lawsuit indicate the accused then posted the videos on the Internet.

The lawsuit also names Barrett, who lives in OR, as a defendant.

Kinnard urged the jury not to be swayed by a possible defense argument that Andrews was not truly harmed by the video.

We would first like to say that Marriott International remains sympathetic to the ordeal that Erin Andrews went through because of the criminal conduct of a third party, who was convicted. “Every lawsuit is a story”, Marc Dedman of Spicer Rudstrom in Nashville told the jurors.