An nameless reader quotes a report from Polygon: Bungie has received virtually $500,000 in damages from a Future 2 participant who harassed considered one of its group managers and his spouse with abusive, racist, and distressing calls and messages, and despatched an unsolicited pizza order to their dwelling in a way designed to intimidate and frighten the couple. In accordance with members of Bungie’s authorized staff, the judgment from a Washington state courtroom units essential precedents that may empower employers to go after anybody who harasses their workers on-line, and strengthen the enforcement of legal guidelines towards on-line trolling and harassment. “This one is particular,” Bungie’s lawyer Dylan Schmeyer tweeted.
As specified by the courtroom’s judgment, the defendant, Jesse James Comer, was “incensed” when the group supervisor — whom each Bungie and the courtroom declined to call, to guard them from additional harassment — spotlighted some fan artwork by a Black group member. Utilizing nameless telephone numbers, Comer left a string of “hideous, bigoted” voicemails on the group supervisor’s private telephone, some asking that Bungie create choices in Future 2 “wherein solely individuals of colour can be killed,” earlier than continuing to threaten the group supervisor’s spouse with extra racist voicemails and texts. Then he ordered a pizza to be delivered to their dwelling, leaving directions for the driving force to knock not less than 5 occasions, loudly, to make the intrusion as horrifying as potential.
The courtroom dominated that Comer was liable to pay over $489,000 in damages, charges, and bills it had accrued in defending and supporting its workers, investigating Comer, and prosecuting the case towards him. As specified by a Twitter thread by Kathryn Tewson, a crusading paralegal who labored on the case, the judgment is important 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 nicely, which might then use its sources to go after the wrongdoer; and acknowledged a brand new tort — a authorized time period for a type of harm or hurt for which courts can impose legal responsibility — round cyber and phone harassment. Whereas it might appear odd to rejoice a judgment that awards an organization — relatively 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 workers who face harassment as a part of their jobs. Bungie and its attorneys have damaged essential new floor that might enhance the extent of safety for employees within the sport trade and past.
