RICHMOND, Va. — Rolling Stone magazine settled a University of Virginia administrator’s lawsuit over its discredited story about a rape on campus, but its legal fights over the botched article aren’t over.
Attorneys for Rolling Stone and Nicole Eramo announced this week that they reached a confidential settlement over the 2014 story “A Rape on Campus,” putting an end to the lengthy case stemming from the now-debunked claims of a woman identified only as “Jackie.”
“We are delighted that this dispute is now behind us, as it allows Nicole to move on and focus on doing what she does best, which is supporting victims of sexual assault,” Libby Locke, an attorney for Eramo, said in a statement.
Rolling Stone called it an “amicable resolution.”
The magazine still faces a more than $25 million lawsuit filed by the University of Virginia chapter of the fraternity where Jackie claimed she had been raped, which is scheduled to go to trial in October. A separate lawsuit from three former fraternity members was dismissed last year.
The settlement in Eramo’s case came after Rolling Stone challenged a jury’s November verdict awarding the former associate dean of students $3 million. Rolling Stone asked the judge in December to overturn the jury’s decision, arguing that there is no evidence reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely acted with actual malice.
Media organizations, including The Associated Press, also urged the judge to overrule the jury’s finding that Rolling Stone “republished” the false claims when it attached an editor’s note highlighting problems with the story to an online version. Jurors said the magazine and its publisher didn’t act with actual malice when the story was originally published but did when it was “republished.”
