By now, everyone knows the basics of “A Rape On Campus,” the Rolling Stone report (no longer on the Rolling Stone website) in which journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely tracked down a woman named “Jackie” who provided her with lurid details of a gang rape that supposedly took place at the University of Virginia’s Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house. The story’s gory details made the frat and its members look like brutal rapists and total scoundrels. The problem is that the story was false and duly retracted with abject apologies from Rolling Stone yesterday after an independent report by Columbia Journalism School Dean Steve Coll and his team found that the editorial processes had failed at every level to heed the warning signs that something was deeply wrong with the story. There is no need to repeat those well-documented failings here, but suffice to say that the protagonist bobbed and weaved at every critical moment. Notwithstanding all those red flags, Rolling Stone decided to publish her story without verifying its key facts, creating havoc for the fraternity and the university. The question Peter Robinson asks is does the “fraternity have any legal recourse against either Rolling Stone or the university?”

There is a lot packed into this question. The first question is if anyone wants to sue, even if they can make out the legal case. The general rule is that the long and torturous road to success in a defamation case is not worth the cost. The proceedings are brutal on witnesses. They cost a fortune to litigate. And worst of all, they bring the entire matter once again into the public eye, where the new round of publicity is bad for the fraternity and the university no matter what the outcome of the case.