It’s up to a jury now to decide whether former U.Va. dean Nicole Eramo deserves millions of dollars from Rolling Stone after the magazine published a now-discredited article alleging the school administrator didn’t care about sexual assault accusers.
Eramo alleged that Rolling Stone, its publisher and the author of the article, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, knew or should have known that their single source for sexual assault accusation was lying.
In the article, a woman named “Jackie” claimed she was gang raped at a U.Va. fraternity as part of an initiation ceremony. Erdely didn’t attempt to contact the men who allegedly raped Jackie or her three friends who comforted her on the night of the alleged attack. Jackie’s story soon fell apart after it was discovered there was no party at the fraternity she named that night and the man she claimed orchestrated the whole thing didn’t even exist.
Rolling Stone’s attorneys framed the problem as an overzealous reporter who relied on a single source — who turned out not to be credible — but didn’t think that what was being reported was false.
After watching Hulk Hogan sue Gawker — and win — many people want blood in the Rolling Stone case as well. It’s definitely a different case, and more complicated, but the Gawker case may have set precedent in making media outlets pay.
There is at least one person (that is not on Team Rolling Stone) who thinks Eramo will ultimately lose. Jazz Shaw of Hot Air noted a paragraph at the bottom of a USA Today article that might make things difficult for the U.Va. administrator.
“The judge has dismissed Eramo’s claim that the story, when taken as a whole, implied Eramo was a ‘false friend’ to Jackie — a claim that Rolling Stone called a ‘critical element’ of her case,” USA Today wrote. “Eramo must prove that the magazine’s statements about her made her appear ‘odious, infamous or ridiculous’ and that the magazine acted with ‘actual malice.'”
Shaw wrote that for Eramo to win after this decision from the judge, “the jury will have to be convinced that Erdely maliciously defamed her and intentionally sought to damage her by knowingly printing false information.”
That is not the case here, Shaw wrote.
“All that’s really been proven is that Erdely is a terrible reporter who was easily fooled by someone peddling a story and that her editors were equally incompetent in checking and approving her work for publication,” Shaw wrote. “Sad as it may be, you can’t imprison people for incompetence nor can you often hold them accountable for damages in a civil suit such as this one.”
“If I had to place a bet on this, assuming that the defense did an even marginally competent job in laying out the criteria to the jury, Rolling Stone will get off the hook,” he added.
Eramo no longer works for U.Va. because of what Erdely wrote. Even if Eramo wasn’t defamed, Erdely certainly caused her harm by failing to properly do her job. If only there were some kind of reparation for that.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
