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.
He’ll be paying that off for a while
Hardly - he has an SSN. Any job that pays taxes he’ll be garnished. Even if he manages to hide his identity with a fake ssn, his life as it was is ruined. Definitely a form of justice considering he literally was trying to ruin her life through these actions.
Sounds like he was charged in absentia, so more symbolic than anything, sadly. I hope she gets some money though.
His wages will be garnished forever. He’s been sentenced to destitution forever. He’d be better off just leaving the country.
I wouldn’t say he is sentenced to destitution. Wage garnishment is capped at 25% of disposable income. And you keep a minimum of 217.5 per week (30 hours of minimum wage a week).
A 25% pay cut certainly hurts but depending on his income he could still have a decent life.
The amount is ridiculous but even a more reasonable sentence around 500k-5mil would probably not change anything for his situation. Most people wouldn’t pay that off in their lifetime at 25% of income.
I’m hoping he’s a US citizen so he won’t be able to avoid paying US taxes anywhere he goes without also getting a new identity and going into permanent hiding. As long as his life is destroyed far more comprehensively than his attempt to destroy hers, I’m happy.
Well done that jury. This is not just about a very large settlement, it’s a very newsworthy settlement. It’s impossible to measure the impact on crimes that don’t happen but I reckon there will be a fair few potential perpetrators of this sort of crime who might just manage to get a fucking grip because of this. And a fair few victims who find a way to exact an entirely justified revenge on those who fail to grow the fuck up anyway.
well if he was to leave the US and never return there’s very little risk in not paying the bills. it’s likely little would happen if you came back to visit for the holidays, either
$200 million for past and future mental anguish and $1 billion in punitive damages
NB: Texas caps punitive damages to $750k.
So what’s the point of such a high number that literally only a handful of people could actually pay? Headlines?
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.
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.
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
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.
