An nameless reader quotes a report from Polygon: Bungie has gained virtually $500,000 in damages from a Future 2 participant who harassed certainly one of its neighborhood managers and his spouse with abusive, racist, and distressing calls and messages, and despatched an unsolicited pizza order to their residence in a fashion designed to intimidate and frighten the couple. In line with members of Bungie’s authorized workforce, the judgment from a Washington state court docket units necessary precedents that can empower employers to go after anybody who harasses their staff on-line, and strengthen the enforcement of legal guidelines in opposition to on-line trolling and harassment. “This one is particular,” Bungie’s legal professional Dylan Schmeyer tweeted.
As specified by the court docket’s judgment, the defendant, Jesse James Comer, was “incensed” when the neighborhood supervisor — whom each Bungie and the court docket declined to call, to guard them from additional harassment — spotlighted some fan artwork by a Black neighborhood member. Utilizing nameless cellphone numbers, Comer left a string of “hideous, bigoted” voicemails on the neighborhood supervisor’s private cellphone, some asking that Bungie create choices in Future 2 “through which solely individuals of coloration could be killed,” earlier than continuing to threaten the neighborhood supervisor’s spouse with extra racist voicemails and texts. Then he ordered a pizza to be delivered to their residence, leaving directions for the motive force to knock at the very least 5 occasions, loudly, to make the intrusion as scary as doable.
The court docket dominated that Comer was liable to pay over $489,000 in damages, charges, and bills it had accrued in defending and supporting its staff, investigating Comer, and prosecuting the case in opposition to him. As specified by a Twitter thread by Kathryn Tewson, a crusading paralegal who labored on the case, the judgment is critical as a result of it acknowledges that patterns of harassment escalate from on-line trolling to real-world violence; establishes that harassment of an worker for doing their job damages the employer as properly, which may then use its sources to go after the offender; and acknowledged a brand new tort — a authorized time period for a type of damage or hurt for which courts can impose legal responsibility — round cyber and phone harassment. Whereas it might appear odd to have a good time a judgment that awards an organization — slightly than a person — with damages for private harassment, the importance of the case is that its authorized precedent empowers and motivates employers to make use of their sources to guard staff who face harassment as a part of their jobs. Bungie and its legal professionals have damaged necessary new floor that might enhance the extent of safety for staff within the sport business and past.