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.
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!
Most of the disgusting comments are at least being criticized directly. Can’t silence the fuckheads, but you can appreciate other people dunking on them, at least
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?
Would the situation be any materially different if he had been convicted for $100.000, short of winning the lottery or inheriting a large sum? The fact that he made it his mission to ruin an ex’s life then didn’t show up to court tells me he’s not exactly the kind to have a legal high-paying job. Regardless of the exact monetary amount the consequences would have been the exact same, the difference is purely symbolic.
The American Justice System is broken, yes, but this particular case is hardly the best example of it. As an outsider looking in, I find it more troubling that you still have the death penalty, the whole “plead guilty or don’t get fair representation from your public defender” thing, over-incarceration, for-profit prisons, etc.
I don’t disagree. Income inequality is an overarching issue in the US. As is charging monetary damages that will never be paid out. My mom was injured in a car accident by someone driving under the influence, and she had to cover all her medical bills out of pocket despite winning in court because the dude wasn’t even working and had no money to garnish.
I was more talking about how it fits in with the current system, as flawed as it may be. I don’t have a good solution aside from overhauling the massive income inequality in this country. People working minimum wage jobs (which are usually jobs we need for society to function!) should not be living the same lifestyle as this dude.
How shitty must it be, as a poor person, that your neighbour is there only because he was convited to have your shitty live?
Speaking as a poor person who learned why he is in the same boat as me: fuck this guy. He deserved it. Literally tried to ruin her life and you expect us to feel bad? Like please.
He’ll be paying that off for a while
Sounds like he was charged in absentia, so more symbolic than anything, sadly. I hope she gets some money though.
Yeah. Sadly, the quote “If you owe the bank a thousand dollars, it’s your problem; if you owe them a billion, it’s their problem” applies here too. Hopefully she bleeds him dry and maybe some prison time too.
His wages will be garnished forever. He’s been sentenced to destitution forever. He’d be better off just leaving the country.
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
I thought the US was pretty hot on chasing non-resident citizens for their taxes (and presumably garnished wages)?
How are you going to enforce it?
I’m not going to enforce it. It’s entirely possible that the US givt does not enforce it despite requiring it. But they usually only ignore taxes for very rich people, who can dodge them anyway, so I’d expect them to enforce it?
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.
Iirc the 25% cap really only ends up applying if you have more than one active garnishment. Individual garnishments are generally 10% of gross. Maybe there are exceptions where one can go up to the full 25% of disposable, but it’s rarely the case.
He would have been better off not trying to ruin her life and put her directly in harms way.
Putting up naked pictures of someone with their name and address? This is a man who wanted her raped or dead.
Fuck your sympathy for him having consequences for his own actions.
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Water from a stone.
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.
God I love being a bartender.
Probably $100-200 per month depending on his salary.
It’s a bit like those cases where a defendant gets 54 life sentences + 100 years. Only in America.
While the ex-boyfriend does deserve strict punishment for sure, $1.2 billion dollars is absurd and it’s annoying to see revenge porn get more punishment than corrupt businessmen that have ruined many more lives.
The problem is not the he got a laughably high fine, it’s that the others don’t. I think something in the hundreds of thousands would be more appropriate for a private individual. I expect an appeal to reign that in some, if filed.
Dude doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who has $200 million. Or could ever earn it in a lifetime.
This is effectively making him pay for it, quite literally, for the rest of his life. Imo that sounds like a more severe punishment than if he were actually rich enough to pay all at once and just end it early.
Who knows, with inflation the way it is, maybe it’ll be $200M for a Big Mac by the time he retires. ;)
$200 million for past and future mental anguish and $1 billion in punitive damages
NB: Texas caps punitive damages to $750k.
Yep. And that’s rough. BigOilCorp 750k is lunch money. So that’s just shit.
Sure it’ll crush this guy though…
So 200.75 million. Still not bad
But still, largely symbolic
So what’s the point of such a high number that literally only a handful of people could actually pay? Headlines?
Exactly, judge wanted to make a point.
This makes it national news.
TBF, I wouldn’t be surprised if a large percentage of people would of considered doing what he did, a “dick move” or “petty” but not a serious crime. This serves as a wake up call.
As a german, I always find amusing when americans are scared of not being able to find a job because they have nude photos online. Meanwhile I have practically seen all of my colleagues/family naked either at the job showers, sauna or nudist parks and beaches.
Special interest groups for the U.S. porn industry propagating shame on the amateurs to boost professional porn sales. 😋
Now imagine none of those people knew you had seen them naked.
German here too. I have no idea why, but I’d find that so incredibly weird. I guess I grew up in a very prude family. I’d love to be more open towards nudity because why the fuck not, there’s nothing inherently sexual or weird about naked people, but I really struggle with that
Fuck that guy. Deserves to have his life ruined. That just karma.
This hopefully serves as an effective deterrent to any potential sickos out there.
How exactly is it a deterrent?
I mean, the guy clear doesn’t have or will ever have $1.2 Billion or anything even close. So clear he won’t actually be paying almost all of this. It’s like threatening to take something away you don’t have in the firstplace?
So what is the actual punishment then?
They can take a chunk of every penny he earns for the rest of his life.
What if he is already poor and just getting by. You literally might just be taking pennies from him.
I guess it’s a form of punishment that favours the poor for a change?
He’ll just work at a bar for cash under the table and tips.
Right? Like, that’s just how many people get by anyway. That seems like a shitty punishment.
When I did garnishments, sometimes I would calculate literal pennies for their checks.
They would get more interest in what they owed than they paid those weeks.
Guy tried to ruin his ex’s life and got Uno Reverse Card’d, lol.
Im pretty sure he can file for bankruptcy. Everything he owns will be gone but he can start fresh.
So where can I see these pics?
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.
You’ve got a point. America greatly prefers superfluous symbolism to sensible logic.
Yes, kind of like sentencing somebody to hundreds or years or multiple lifetimes for mass murder.
You can’t bleed a rock.
There’s a time and a place…
