Woman Is Awarded $1.2B in ‘Revenge Porn’ Lawsuit
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Can someone explain to me the possible reasoning behind such a massive sum?
Brad Gilde, a lawyer for D.L., said that he did not expect the full $1.2 billion to be paid out, but that he hoped it would serve as a deterrent for others.
It is like saying you have to serve 300 life sentences. That is just 1 and everyone knows it. “Be quiet now or you will get another 50” “oh nO, nOt 50 mOrE”
I'm not sure I agree with the principle, but I do see the point and it does make sense as a figure for me now.
The small part that is civil is the actual damages. Like measurable material damages. The criminal law system exists to protect non-material things, the civil to deal with material damages. So you should go to criminal court for your mistreatment as a person and civil for your material losses. Make sense?
Civil damages in this case should be limited to things like lost income, lawyers costs, the effects of damage to her credit history, return of money stolen, compensation for the time required to deal with unnecessary BS, maybe the cost of some therapy.
This would also be much safer for everyone, from the victim to the accused:
* Currently there is no reason to assume he will stop. He's not in prison and have nothing to lose right? If he were in prison that would make continuing quiet difficult. But he isn't.
* And there is no reason to think he is guilty either, since he's not actually been tried in criminal court and it isn't clear if he even had a lawyer. Yet his life is ruined (rightly or wrongly who knows?).
Of course he isn’t going to have, or ever earn, $1.2B but the court can garnish his wages.
The compensation to the victim will enrich her life to a degree. If the perpetrator was incarcerated all she’d be paid is peace of mind.
There’s nothing in this judgement that is stopping her from getting a permanent restraining order or anything. She may already have one.
In the US, when someone goes to prison, their life goes to serve private corporations by way of slave labor and exploitation or the prison itself, similarly by way of slave labor. This ultimately costs the tax payer around (IIRC) $50k/year.
Similarly, if Steve kills someone in a drunk driving accident and goes to jail for 25 years, the family of the deceased can rest assured that he won’t be on the road any longer but that does little to compensate for the fact that their loved one is gone.
Money doesn’t bring them back but a mother or father having died is going to undoubtedly become a financial drain for 95% of people in the country by way of lost earnings, child care, therapy, lost productivity of survivors, etc etc.
If instead of working for pennies in prison Steve could be barred from driving for life and instead spend his time doing productive work that earns more than $0.25 and pay a hefty sum in restitution to the victims in perpetuity they’d have the peace of mind that he isn’t driving and also have assistance with their loss.
But assuming he did do it. Why would he stop now, fear of another 1.2bn fine?
And if he insanely enough DID have 1.2bn that would be ok then? He could just pay and walk?
In this case, I'd expect the court to look for older harassment cases, stalking, that kind of thing. $1.2B is effectively an infinite sum of money with no jail time and nothing else (AFAICT he's not blocked from living hear her or from using facebook, etc), so it sounds like a corner, not something that sorts well with other harassment/stalking cases.
Maybe he’ll appeal it for something more “reasonable”?
On the other hand for crimes like this you have to ask what the financial penalty should be to actually deter every possible perpetrator?
For all violations like this where there isn’t loss of assets with objective value, what should the fine be?
What should be the fine for sexual assault for instance?
So the jury decided to send a message, "you will spend the rest of your life trying and failing to pay off this judgement" and I bet the jury also figured a sum of one billion dollars would result in some articles with his name in them too.
If the culprit has no money, this judgement is not going to do much for the victim. Is there any incentive for him not to continue harassing her? He's got nothing left to lose now.
(I'm not feeling sorry for him; he should be in prison.)
That’s been the reality of any group that’s wanted to overthrow societal standards for good or bad. In this case at least the jury decided payment indicates to people with the resources to actually make peoples lives a mess, that they have ample resources to lose
The judge can't really reduce it sua sponte in this case, without someone asking them to (there are cases where there are caps and they will automatically reduce it to the maximum allowed)
In this case, it will also become much harder to challenge in a few months if they defendant doesn't do something.
It is even know there is a table that judges can follow with ranges but the loss of a child could even be <5000 Euro.
While the money won't actually heal your sorrows, the loss of your partner amounting to 5000 Euro's on your bank account feels like putting salt in the wound.
So what gives here?
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Obviously he’s never going to pay up, but setting the precedent that this kind of partner abuse can result in a lien on everything the perpetrator has, and seizing their car[s], taking a cut of their wages, etc essentially indefinitely might finally start to act as a deterrent against this.
Otherwise, I assume he could write the whole thing off by declaring bankruptcy.
He will contest it.