I’m not so sure that a fraternity could not be seen as “sympathetic” in this particular instance, unless jurors went in with a preconceived, personal anti-frat agenda (which Erdeley may have had before she started on the article). Hopefully, jurors would keep an open mind and look at the facts. I’m not exactly pro fraternity and was surprised that one of my sons had an interest in it. But it worked for him. Some of these fraternity guys are probably not choir boys but it is a huge stretch to characterize a whole fraternity as a haven for gang rapists.
That should be enough. Most people were never in fraternities.
@Ohiodad51 but could the “hi lo” deal be disclosed to the public after damages are calculated?
It might be enough, but you won’t know until you see the venire (the pool of potential jurors), so it is hard to plan for.
Usually a hi lo isn’t disclosed except to the court.
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@xiggi, if the plaintiffs are found in fact to not be public figures, then the burden of proof set to establish that Rolling Stone should be held liable is negligence. If the plaintiffs are found to be public figures, then to show liability they will have to prove that Rolling Stone acted in reckless disregard of the truth. That is a different issue than the issue of proving damages. <<<
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Thanks for sharing your opinion on this case. It helps me finding some balance with the legal research and factual evidence related to cases of defamation. After all, it appears that such cases are following the evolution of the media distribution.
I do not think that much will be learned from this one as I would be surprised if it ever gets inside a courtroom.
@Bay, do you want to go with that argument?
I don’t think I will win anything. There are a hundred to two hundred of us here that might fit that description 
But if you want to take the case on a contingency basis and I don’t have to spend much time on the case…and you’re a great lawyer…I will consider the case. 
@Ohiodad51
I don’t know. The case I sat on… I wanted to give the plaintiff something, but I was overruled.
I was shocked how tight the jury was with the defendent’s money.
I wouldn’t rely on lawyers to determine long term damage.
The hi lo concept is interesting. Damages that aren’t capped is scary.
@xiggi, no problem. The older I get, the more I realize I don’t know much. It is always a treat to find something I actually know a little bit about.
@dstark, yep, it sucks to walk in a courtroom and not have any idea where the jury is gonna land. But it is better than working for a living.
You like your job!
That’s awesome!
@Ohiodad51, love that quote. Me too. And I know less and less every year.
I also like it when I do know something, and somebody comments on what I know. They don’t know what I know and I know they are full of @@@@. 
I hope I am not the ignoramous and doing that here in this thread.
Well, since teenagers know everything, we might wonder about the timing of forgetting it all after becoming parents.
This is what I’m wondering about. If the jury is drawn from Charlottesville, or from the surrounding county, how do people in general feel about U.Va. there? In particular, will they have ideas about fraternities? It’s very hard to predict. I can tell you that if this happened with respect to a Yale fraternity, a jury drawn from New Haven might not be sympathetic to the fraternity at all. Charlottesville may be different, I don’t know.
@hunt Yes, those are crucial questions we don’t know the answer to. One of the advantages the plaintiff has in any litigation is they get to “pick the playground”, and decide where to file suit. Whether that is state court in Virginia, federal court there or a state of residence of one of the frat brothers (which may or may not be a possibility) will depend on where the plaintiff thinks they can get the most favorable conditions, including the best chance of finding a sympathetic jury pool. The Federal District Court for the Eastern District in Virginia is also known as the Rocket Docket, and cases will go to trial quickly there. Whether the plaintiff feels a quick trial will be in their interest may be a factor in choice of venue as well.
The problem with the argument that the whole story has been debunked in two weeks so what damage has there been to the frat does not take into account the fact that the number of people who see and hear the original gang rape allegation do not always follow the story through to hear the retraction.
I had lunch with a friend two weeks ago and she said " Hey, so who knew that your son went to a school with a bunch of rapists" The damage will remain for some time.
Fortunately, in this case, the retraction did get a great deal of attention, unlike many other situations where the retraction is buried. However, RS’s retraction was several months too late.
An article in today’s WaPo discusses Dean Nicole Eramo’s response to the RS retraction and Erdely’s apology: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/04/22/u-va-dean-speaking-out-for-the-first-time-assails-retracted-rolling-stone-story/?hpid=z3
She’s fighting mad and I don’t blame her in the least. And it’s disturbing to think that any human being would email Eramo to say they hope that she (or a daughter if she has one) would be raped, as supposed karma for the now-discredited RS accusations about Eramo’s response to Jackie’s story.
She got rape threats and death threats because of course she did. Women in controversial high-profile situations always get rape threats. It’s not because this was a case of alleged rape; it’s because some men make rape threats if a woman espouses a position they disagree with.
Look Eramo is going to sue Rolling Stone and so she should. There was no excuse for what Rolling Stone did. But that does not change my views on what is going on at UVA and other campuses around this country. Watch the 5 minute Eramo interview embedded in the article. The “reporter” is absolutely correct and NO Eramo did not answer her question.
I hope Nicole Eramo does sue Rolling Stone. As she says “Using me as the personification of a heartless administration, the Rolling Stone article attacked my life’s work”
In other words, Rolling Stone didn’t just defame Eramo’s character and her damage her reputation, but by attacking her integrity and competence, devalued her ability to work as an advocate for victims of sexual assault.
As I wrote in post #200 above, I feel the same way about Allen Groves, UVA’s Dean of Students and Title IX coordinator. Erdeley mischaracterized Groves’ statements at a UVA Board meeting which she attended, implying that he downplayed the Office of Civil Rights investigation of the college. Erdeley then went on to relay that mischaracterization to Catherine Lhamon the head of the OCR (which at the time was investigating UVA for Title IX violations) and included Lhamon’s reaction to her (Erdeley’s) mischaracterization. There is no room for misunderstanding here. A video of the board meeting which is available on YouTube proves that Erdeley’s description is patently false.
Of course if either of Eramo or Groves does decide to sue they would need to have UVA’s support and blessing to do so, but from the sound of Eramo’s letter to Rolling Stone, I’d say that Eramo’s lawyers are ready to rumble. This is the part of Eramo’s letter that seems particularly damning to me:
It’s not clear who “us” refers to, but at this point in the dispute I doubt that Eramo’s lawyers would misquote Rolling Stone’s lawyers. The fact that as recently as February, two months after Jackie’s story was de-bunked, Rolling Stone’s lawyers “stood by” the article’s characterization of Eramo and said that its portrayal of her was “fair” will be red meat to Eramo’s lawyers.
Are you referring to the embedded video titled “U-Va. associate dean defends policy allowing “informal” resolution of sexual assault complaints”? I assume that’s Eramo being interviewed. Do we know who the interviewer is or when the interview took place? Since Title IX doesn’t allow informal resolution of sexual assault complaints, I find it odd that Eramo would be defending that course of action and am unclear what relevance this interview has to Jackie’s case.