In July 2008, Jacobson filed a multi-million-dollar libel lawsuit in Cook County against WBBM's parent company CBS Corporation, multiple WBBM-TV staff, a Northwestern University professor who spoke about the footage, and a neighbor of the Stebic home. The lawsuit claimed that "The videotape was carefully edited in an attempt to create the appearance of an ‘illicit’ relationship" and Jacobson said that there were other mothers with children at the home when the video was shot. A circuit judge rejected the lawsuit and granted summary judgment in favor of CBS, in July 2013, saying that the CBS criticism and report was "constitutionally protected expressions of opinion" or based on facts, and that the plaintiff failed to establish that CBS fabricated unfavorable content. Jacobson's attorney said that her legal team "always figured there would be an appeal before this went to trial", and intended to appeal on the basis that Jacobson was not a public figure when the video was released and that an earlier judge in the case had made a different ruling. The Illinois Appellate Court, sitting as a three-judge panel, rejected the appeal in December 2014, saying that Jacobson was "lready a well-known local personality and high-profile reporter", that she drew further public spotlight during the period after Lisa Stebic's disappearance, and that her closer involvement with the family "invited scrutiny of her methods". The appellate court also said that the different ruling in the earlier court, claimed by Jacobson, was not actually the statement made by that court. Jacobson petitioned the Illinois Supreme Court, but was denied leave to appeal on January 28, 2015.