ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews settles court case, ends appeals with hotels

Sportscaster and TV host Erin Andrews on Monday settled with two hotel companies that were found partially to blame for a stalker posting secretly recorded nude video of her on the Internet.

A jury in March awarded Andrews $55 million following a trial in which jurors also found her stalker at fault. But the two hotel companies that own and once operated the Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt appealed the verdict. The hotel is a franchise.

By settling now, Andrews stops what could have been years of appeals.

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The settlement agreement was reached in the morning and is confidential, said Ann Dee McClane a, spokeswoman for Spicer Rudstrom, the law firm that represented West End Hotel Partners and Windsor Capital Group.

The trial featured tearful testimony from the Fox Sports reporter and host of the TV show “Dancing with the Stars.” Andrews said that she suffered from depression, public shame and humiliation after finding out that someone had secretly recorded videos of her in a hotel room and then posted them on the Internet.

Andrews’ attorneys had argued that the companies enabled the stalker to shoot the videos. The companies said he was a determined criminal who should be solely responsible.

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Michael David Barrett pleaded guilty to stalking Andrews in three cities and altering peepholes in hotel rooms in Nashville and Columbus, Ohio, to secretly shoot nude videos of the sportscaster. Barrett never showed up for the trial, but he said in a videotaped deposition that he altered the hotel room door peepholes so he could pull them out and use his cellphone camera to shoot video through the open hole.

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