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Erin Andrews Blames Hotels for Enabling Peeping Tom
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Jason Merritt/Getty Images
UPDATE Dec. 8, 2011: Andrews refiled the exact same lawsuit seeking $10 million in damages—$6 million from the hotel and $4 million from Barrett—in order to ensure the statute of limitations on the court filing did not run out.
She took care of her stalker. Now Erin Andrews is gunning for the hotels she claims enabled her the stealthy cinematographer.
The Dancing With the Stars alum/ESPN reporter filed a lawsuit Thursday in Chicago against a number of hotel chains, including Marriott International and Raddison Hotels, accusing them of failing to protect her privacy from the Peeping Tom.
You could say she didn't particularly care for their room service...
Also among the defendants is her candid cameraman himself, Michael David Barrett, a onetime insurance salesman who pleaded guilty to a felony stalking charge last year and who is currently serving a two-and-a-half year sentence in a federal pen.
Barrett admitted jerryrigging a peephole in a hotel suite adjacent to the Dancing With the Stars hoofer and surreptitiously videotaping her in the nude, then disseminating the footage on the Internet.
As a result, Andrews' lawsuit seeks to hold the lodges accountable for management decisions that led employees to divulge her room number and allow the 48-year-old pervert to register in connecting hotel rooms at his request without her knowledge.
"Not only did the hotels confirm that Ms. Andrews was intending to register as a guest, but they also released, without Ms. Andrews' consent, her room number. The hotels then provided Michael David Barrett a hotel room immediately adjacent to hers," her law firm, Greene, Broilett & Wheeler, said in a statement.
In court docs, Andrews stated she wanted to go after "those who put my personal safety at risk and who allowed my privacy to be invaded while I was a guest at their hotel, as well as for actually stalking me and making my most personal moments public."
To keep such incidents from ever happening again, she wanted to hit them where it hurts: their pocketbook.
"Although I'll never be able to fully erase the impact that this invasion of privacy has had upon me and my family, I do hope that my experience will cause the hospitality industry to be more vigilant in protecting its guests from the time they reserve a hotel room until they check out," Andrews said in a statement
The 32-year-old sportscaster is seeking unspecified damages for infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy while aiming to collect damages against Barrett for slightly different claims: intentional infliction of emotional distress.
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Photos: Court Appearances gallery
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