Jury awards $3 million in damages to U-Va. dean for Rolling Stone defamation

Article here. Excerpt:

'A federal jury has awarded $3 million in damages to a former University of Virginia associate dean after finding that a Rolling Stone magazine article sullied her reputation by alleging that she was indifferent to allegations of a gang rape on campus.

The 10 jurors heard arguments for damages in the case Monday, determining that Nicole Eramo’s suffering should cost a reporter and Rolling Stone multiple millions as a result of the article, which was retracted after its serious flaws were exposed. Eramo testified during the trial that after the article published, she faced threats, lost her ability to pursue her life’s work as a sexual assault prevention advocate, and took a major hit to her professional credibility.

On Friday, the same jury found that the magazine and one of its journalists, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, was liable for defaming Eramo in a 9,000-word account of sexual assault published in November 2014. The magazine in December amended the article online to say that it had lost faith in the source of its most shocking allegations, and it later fully retracted the article after a Charlottesville police investigation and a report by the Columbia University School of Journalism found that aspects of the account were false.'