UVA Dean Files $7.5 Million Lawsuit Against Rolling Stone Over Rape Hoax

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Making the liars pay for fake journalism:

A University of Virginia associate dean of students filed a multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone magazine Tuesday, alleging that it portrayed her as callous and indifferent to allegations of sexual assault on campus and made her the university’s “chief villain” in a now-debunked article about a fraternity gang rape.
Nicole Eramo is seeking more than $7.5 million in damages from Rolling Stone; its parent company, Wenner Media; and Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the investigative journalist who wrote the explosive account of sexual assault on the campus in Charlottesville. The magazine retracted the article after news organizations and the Columbia University journalism school found serious flaws in it.

The entire complaint is online. Via Memeorandum, with more blog commentary from Reason Magazine, Legal In·surrection, Ed Driscoll, Moe Lane, and The PJ Tatler.

 

51 comments

  2. It makes sense to go after the deep pockets for money. It makes sense to go after institutions because they should’ve been the most responsible actors.
    I just wish someone would get around to the perpetrators. Some of this mattress-carrying nonsense needs to be chilled.

  3. I would agree, but when I try to picture someone suing an apparently mentally-ill young woman, who is already practiced at lying and playing the victim for sympathy, it’s hard to imagine that going well.

  4. You’re right about the optics. But ask why this apparently mentally disturbed young woman is permitted, encouraged even, to remain on campus harassing and slandering an innocent man?

    She should have been quietly expelled.

  6. Used to be we simply ignored deranged people until they posed a threat. Now they get Twitter accounts, publishing contracts and jobs with MSNBC.

  7. > associate dean of students filed a … lawsuit against Rolling Stone

    So, this is basically the Mensheviks suing the Bolsheviks.

  8. It’s not just the optics, it’s also the shameless lying with “cluster B” personalities. University deans are not Columbo or Stacy. They’re not investigators. Determining facts in the face of competing claims is not a core competency.

  9. Is this Dean, by chance, the same one who backed up the RS article by wrongly punishing the fraternity?!? THAT Dean needs to be thrown to the curb.

  11. This pushback was inevitable. We still have laws in America and feminism’s transparent attempt to set up a parallel system of laws via an inquisition and kangaroo courts which sees the world through the most severe meaning of “sexism” was bound to fail. It’s one thing to block someone on Twitter and another to actually destroy lives because you have this secret knowledge of how the patriarchy works. In fact that secret knowledge verges on outright paranoia and sociopathy. Who in their right mind attacks an ad with a woman in a bikini? What kind of shared mass hysteria works people up to such a pitch? The answer is an echo chamber where ideas are censored along with pedantic definitions of how censorship is only gov’t, etc. These people are too crazy to run their own lives let alone a society.

  12. Trust me, this is only the first of many against Rolling Stone. And UVA will have its own and also individuals there who violated the civil rights of other individuals. This new feminist fad is going to be pricey.

  13. As Insty observed, Jackie will likely be deposed during the discovery process, which should be very enlightening.

  14. Can she use a dating service where she tries to find a man born without any sense of danger?

    “Don’t walk in front of that bus, honey. It’s dangerous.”

    “Really?”

    “Yup. Let’s go home. I’m making Hi-Lex soup tonight.”

  17. If there is any justice, the fraternity members who were wrongly defamed, accused and punished by the school will be getting 10 times that payout.

  18. I’m wondering if this was triggered by Rolling Stone‘s declaration that they will continue at their discretion to use Erdley’s services. The arrogance and negligence in that deserves punishment. This is the publication which makes use of Matt Taibbi to cover the financial sector. Justice would be total destruction.

  21. Which is why colleges need to set a no exceptions policy: all claims of rape or sexual assault or whatever will be turned over to te police, because only law enforcement professionals are inclined, trained and equipped to handle such complaints. If the alleged victims choose, at that point, to drop their complaints, the colleges should include such choices in their statistics, because you just know the feds will intervene.

  23. It’s the start of the university’s legal defense. A calculated move. They bet on the Rolling Stone article being good PR and it blew up in their face. Now they’re in damage control mode.

  25. How could they possibly think a rape article could be good PR? If they thought that, they’re dumber than RS and Erdely combined.

  26. BWAHAHAHAHA! I’m having a bad day today, and this incident really cheered me up. Not that I enjoy the misery of others, but at the thought of justice rightly done. For a change.

  27. The literal translation of schadenfreude is “bad, or evil joy.” Still, the temptation to engage in it can be overwhelming for a reasonable person.

  28. I remember Taibbi from the internet rag “Exile.” I read his column a couple times and realized the man is an idiot and ignored him thereafter. he might be qualified to cover the operation of the local wastewater treatment plant, and I would e question that, but he certainly is utterly unqualified for anything else.

    The destruction of Rolling Stone would aid the country greatly. Not quite so much as the destruction of the NYT, or the 3 network’s news divisions, but still a great help.

  30. Still, it smells of CYA. the Dean is almost certain to lose as public official proving defamation is an extremely high wall, and with no hand holds, to climb

  34. Why hasn’t anyone released the actual name of “Jackie”? I understand the reasoning behind ‘rape shield’ ethics in journalism, but even HuffPo and Salon now acknowledge the Rolling Stone article as a fraud. “Jackie” isn’t the victim, she’s one of the perpetrators.

  36. I have to battle with my sin nature every day, QM. The best I can hope for is to win more times than not, LOL.

  38. If I’m going to be thinking anyway, I like to think big. Therefore, I’d like to see the entirety of the 3 networks self-destruct, not just the news divisions. 😀

  39. If by enlightening you mean, cringe worthy, excruciating, and laden with schadenfreude, yes.

  41. Hey, I’m down with watching some hot Blue-on-Blue action. It’s been a long time coming, and it looks as if the left is reaching the point where its own internal contradictions tear it apart.

    Short of a meteor strike on NYC I can’t imagine a more enjoyable spectacle.

  42. “…because you have this secret knowledge of how the patriarchy works..”

    I have long considered progressivism to be a modern day gnostic cult.

  43. I’m betting they kept Erdley on board because she’d be more dangerous on the outside. They’re circling the wagons and this particular loose cannon would be more threatening to them outside pointed in.

  44. Oh no, only a bad person would delight in the misfortunes of others, and none of us here are bad people.

    Heh heh.

  46. “Freude, schoner Gotterfunken. Tochter aus Elysium…”

    The lovely, lovely Ludwig Van…

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