A Texas woman was awarded $1.2 billion in damages last week after she sued her former boyfriend and accused him of sending intimate images of her to her family, friends and co-workers from fake online accounts.
The woman, who is identified only by the initials D.L. in court documents, sued her former boyfriend, Marques Jamal Jackson, claiming he had psychologically and sexually abused her by distributing so-called revenge porn, a term for sexually explicit photos or videos of someone that are shared without consent.
The couple started dating in 2016 and were living together in Chicago in early 2020 when they began a “long and drawn-out break up,” according to the lawsuit. D.L. temporarily moved to her mother’s house in Texas and Mr. Jackson began accessing the security system there to spy on her, the lawsuit said.
In October 2021, the couple officially ended their relationship and D.L. told Mr. Jackson that she no longer wanted him to have access to what the lawsuit described as “visual intimate material” of her that she had allowed him to have while they were a couple.
Instead, he posted the images on several social media platforms and websites, including a pornographic website, and in a publicly accessible folder on the online file-sharing service Dropbox, the lawsuit said. He identified her in the material, using her name and address, and images of her face. He created fake social media pages and email accounts to share the material with her family, friends and co-workers, including by sending them a link to the Dropbox folder. On the social media pages where he had posted the images, he tagged accounts for her employer and for her personal gym.
The lawsuit says that this was still happening days before the complaint was filed in April 2022.
Mr. Jackson also used D.L.’s personal bank account to pay his rent, harassed her with calls and text messages from masked numbers, and told her loan officer that she had submitted a fraudulent loan application, the lawsuit said.
In a March 2022 email to D.L. cited in the lawsuit, Mr. Jackson said, “You will spend the rest of your life trying and failing to wipe yourself off the internet.”
Mr. Jackson could not be reached for comment. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.
He also did not appear in court on Wednesday, when a jury in Houston ordered him to pay $200 million for past and future mental anguish and $1 billion in punitive damages.
Look, I get that she was wronged, but unless the defendant is Google or Microsoft, leveling damages like this is egregious and absurd.
They may have well awarded 150 billion dollars worth of damages. There’s no way it’ll ever be paid so what’s the goal here? Showcase an astronomical amount as a flex?
Yes, it is a flex. It’s an expression of zero tolerance for the kind of egregious shit this turkey was pulling.
The US system seems to use symbolic numbers, eg 200 years in jail for multiple murdering etc, pretty regularly. I don’t see how this is any different.
The point is not really the money. The point is the headline and the fact that there are remedies for when you can’t pay a judgement. Like others said, his wages will be garnished forever. And this is one of the largest civil judgements ever. That plus the salacious nature means that anytime this guy’s name is searched for, it will be beside this. It won’t leave him.
Until we get better laws for things like revenge porn where there are actual criminal penalties, this is probably the best we can do.
Oh for fucks sakes. We have people who were wrongly imprisoned and spent decades in jail and they get a couple of hundred Gs and this lady is awarded $1.2B because someone saw her hoo-ha. We really have fucked up morals. The award amount is so obnoxious that I’m almost glad she’ll never see a dime of it. This is just a mockery of justice.
He posted her real name and address along with those videos and pics of her, which is basically opening her up to being attacked. He also threatened her job prospects and threatened to continue harassing her for the rest of her life. I agree that there should be more paid out to wrongly imprisoned people, but this was more than just having her hoo-ha shown.
Dieselgate cost VW $15B which affected literally millions of people on a global scale over over a decade of gaming emissions standards.
The Enron accounting scandal cost $7B and involved one of the richest corporations in the nation.
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill cost BP $20B and caused irreparable damage to the environment down there.
But yeah, having your pics posted online and one’s address leaked is SURELY on a similar level to these other crimes. Oh, definitely! /s
That doesn’t mean this case is no big deal. Poor woman.
I do agree that the large amount is silly because the guy is probably not a billionaire. Hopefully they will increase punishments for corporations and rich people-- oh wait, they won’t. That’s fucked up, but not related to this case
I think it’s an absurd ruling as well, but I don’t feel bad for the douchebag in question. I don’t really understand how they came up with the numbers. 1 billion in punitive damages? Based on what? Crazy.
But I’m fine with the guy being financially ruined for it. He deserves that much.
Man fuck these comments. He explicitly said he wanted to ruin the rest of her life. He intentionally posted them with her full name and address, endangering her. And to ruin her chance at getting/keeping a job. Dude does deserve to have his wages garnished for the rest of his life, at least there’s a cap on UNLIKE WHAT HE TRIED TO DO TO HER!
Dude does deserve to have his wages garnished for the rest of his life
I agree.
However, if he made 100k a year and had to pay all of that, his life would have to last 12 million years. Just seems like some of the maths here is a bit off. But maybe I just don’t understand the American justice system.
I mean we do multiple life sentences or life + so many years so I don’t see why the same logic wouldn’t apply when the penalty is monetary. It’s a super high number to ensure he’s paying the rest of his life, even if he suddenly comes into a bunch of money. It’s intended as a warning.
I mean how much money can you put on the price of someone’s life, safety, or missed future potential earnings? I think it was just a huge number to “ruin the rest of his life” as he attempted to do.
For example, the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit. The coffee was so hot it melted that lady’s skin together. And this was an ongoing issue that McDonald’s had been warned of several times and didn’t listen. So while the lady was just trying to get her medical costs covered, the jury awarded an additional $2.7m in punitive damages because McDonald’s didn’t listen. Punitive damages are literally money as punishment.
It’s a super high number to ensure he’s paying the rest of his life, even if he suddenly comes into a bunch of money. It’s intended as a warning.
Yes, I get that. Still I find it a very strange, even macabre. I made the point in a couple of other comments, but got no useful replies so far.
It seems to me this guy was basically convicted to living at “minimum wage” or at least some minimum that can’t be taken from him, so he can cover his basic needs.
So he is convicted to being poor. Nothing else. But, like there is actual poor people with a very similar standard of living, that did nothing wrong. It just doesn’t seem fair. How shitty must it be, as a poor person, that your neighbour is there only because he was convited to have your shitty live?
Also, what if he was already super poor before that and he won’t come into any fortune. What money are you even gonna take from him? Does that mean if you’re already poor you can just publish revengeporn, because what are they gonna take from you?
Like, if you’re poor … what is the “warning”? That they make sure you gonna be poor forever? Chances are that would be the case anyway.
Also, what incentive does this guy now have to actually contribute to society by doing anything more than the minimum he needs to afford?
Companies have been fined way less when their product literally kills someone.
