Rolling Stone files motion for protective order in Virginia dean’s defamation case

[Valin]

Washington Post:

Erik Wemple

September 4 2015

 

Lawyers for Rolling Stone magazine yesterday entered a motion aimed at limiting the amount of information and documents disclosed in the ongoing defamation case filed this year by Nicole Eramo, a University of Virginia associate dean whose actions were depicted in the November 2014 Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus.” That story, which narrated an alleged gang rape at a campus fraternity house, was later exposed as a fraud, prompting a review by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a retraction.

 

Though the Columbia report laid bare the faulty editorial procedures behind “A Rape on Campus,” written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely (a named defendant in Eramo’s suit), Rolling Stone is apparently seeking to limit how much more information can leak into the public realm through this proceeding. “The Parties acknowledge that disclosure and discovery activity in this litigation is likely to include production of confidential, proprietary, or private information for which special protection from public disclosure and from use for any purpose other than prosecuting this litigation may be warranted,” reads the proposed protective order. Though Eramo’s legal team isn’t opposing the order, it comes at the behest of Rolling Stone.

 

(Snip)

 

Jeffrey Pyle, a partner in the Boston-based firm Prince Lobel Tye LLP, says he’s “not surprised” to find that the order seeks to protect “unpublished newsgathering materials,” since the legal departments of media outlets are constantly fighting subpoenas and fishing expeditions for such materials. As for Rolling Stone’s quest to get this stuff protected, Pyle says

that one possible motivation would be to “prevent dribs and drabs of information about Rolling Stone’s newsgathering activities from being released in the media and unfairly harming it in the public eye.”

 

News organizations could intervene with opposition to the proposed order, says Pyle, though it “would probably be better to do so before documents have been exchanged pursuant to it.”

[Valin]

UPDATE: Rolling Stone’s ‘Jackie’ Must Testify in Defamation Deposition
Mark Antonio Wright
April 6, 2016

The New York Times reports that a Virginia judge has ruled that “Jackie,” the center of Rolling Stone’s debunked gang-rape story at the University of Virginia, must give a deposition in a defamation suit brought against the magazine.

Jackie’s lawyers had asked that she be excused from being deposed in the case because, “Forcing [Jackie] to revisit her sexual assault, and then the re-victimization that took place after the Rolling Stone article came out, will inevitably lead to a worsening of her symptoms and current mental health.”

 

(Snip)

 

The defamation suit is being brought against Rolling Stone by UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo, who disputes the magazine’s account that she acted in a callous, uncaring fashion toward Jackie after the former UVA student claimed to her that she had been raped at a campus fraternity house.