It sets a precedent in law:

    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.

The message is that unless you're well north of a few billion, Texas will make revenge porn perpetrators hurt financially.

Exactly. And if you are well north of a few billion, the next jury can determine that in your case the penalty should be one trillion.

It sends a message to people that unless you're Elon Musk you'll get fucked over if you try this.

In a way I feel like it makes a mockery out of it. It is such an unrealistic figure that I doubt he’ll end up paying anywhere near it and if that is the case, what is the purpose of the number?

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”

In US law, each case sets precedent for the cases that come after it. This is now a damages figure that will be referred to by other lawyers. Imagine if a corporation does something like this, the way eBay was terrorizing a couple? Their damages are now in the billions rather than the hundreds of thousands.

I felt like that when I initially read this. But now, after reading some of the other comments, I think I see where they're coming from. I now see it more like "You destroyed someone else's entire life; the damages caused by that is essentially unlimited, so you will pay them unlimited damages. Give them all your money for the rest of your life."

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.

No, this has no info on how someone like Elon would be punished if they did this.

It sounds a bit lake these double or triple life sentences.

The point of multiple life sentences is so if one is successfully appealed, they need go to through the whole bureaucratic process again to appeal another. This is quite different.

Why apply reason when you can use emotion instead?

What would reason look like in this case?

Awarding someone billions as an expression of (righteous) outrage.

I like this punishment — the damage has already been done, now he’s going to pay for it.

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.

Of course, he has not been tried or had a lawyer let alone been found guilty.

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?

Courts spend a fair amount of effort on finding the most similar older sentences and making this sentence sort well with the older ones. That's reason.

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.

That they weren’t able to send him to jail where he clearly belongs, so presumably went for some kind of statute driven penalty. I’m assuming there’s a $x per instance cap and it sounds like this abuser is prolific.

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?

It was decided by a jury. According to the article, after they broke up, he used the security cameras installed at her mother's house in another state to spy on her, he posted her private sexy pics everywhere - on social media, distributed via public Dropbox folder, and uploaded to porn sites. He even made sure to send to her family and friends on social media. While doing this he emails her: "You will spend the rest of your life trying and failing to wipe yourself off the internet"

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.

This is the way - very good explanation.

So it's mostly a symbolic judgement.

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.)

If someone is at the point where they are making society consider whether it’s worth punishing them anymore because they’d have nothing left to lose, then they already effectively had nothing left to lose. If you want to try and bluff society on acceptable behavior then you should read Vom Kriege and be prepared to fight hard or deal with the consequences.

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

No incentive? He may not be in prison today but that is easily remedied if he so chooses.

Yes, of course he's probably not going to pay much of anything, but now she can have some payback by making his life suck for a while.

Consecutive lives in financial jail.

It was a default judgement. As a result, there was nobody to oppose it and say "this is too high". If actually challenged, it would not stand.