TV presenter awarded £39m over stalker naked hotel video

A TV sports reporter has been awarded £39 million in damages after a stalker filmed her naked in her hotel room and posted the video online.

Erin Andrews, 37, launched a civil case against Michael David Barrett as well as two hotel companies after the incident at the Nashville Marriott in Tennessee.

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Mr Barrett shot videos in hotels in Nashville and Columbus, Ohio, and posted them online. The trial focused on the video shot in 2008 at the Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt.

Ms Andrews, a Fox Sports presenter, claimed the hotel was negligent by giving Barrett a room next to hers at his request.

Barrett pleaded guilty to stalking Ms Andrews, altering hotel room peepholes to take nude videos of her.

He was sentenced to 30 months in prison and did not appear at the trial.

Barrett said he was the only one responsible, saying he called the hotel pretending to be in a group with Andrews to confirm the reservations.

He said he then used an employee phone to find out her room number and then made a request to book a room next to hers.

According to the Metro, Davidson County Circuit Court Judge Hamilton Gayden found Barrett at fault and left it up to jurors to decide if the hotel owner, West End Hotel Partners, and former operator, Windsor Capital Group, should share any responsibility.

The paper added that the hotel is a franchise and Marriott was not part of the trial.

The hotel companies' attorneys argued that the stalker was solely to blame for the incident, and that Andrews' continued career success shows she has not suffered severe and permanent distress.

However, Andrews says she still lives with the effects of the four-minute video being posted online, suffering from depression and shame, and says people still taunt her about it.

According to CBC News, she said: "This happens every day of my life. Either I get a tweet or somebody makes a comment in the paper or somebody sends me a still video to my Twitter or someone screams it at me in the stands and I'm right back to this. I feel so embarrassed and I am so ashamed."

Andrews posted a statement on Twitter following the verdict:

The hotel companies said after the verdict that they were unsure whether they would appeal.

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