An nameless reader quotes a report from Polygon: Bungie has received nearly $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 house in a fashion designed to intimidate and frighten the couple. In keeping with members of Bungie’s authorized group, the judgment from a Washington state courtroom units vital precedents that may empower employers to go after anybody who harasses their workers on-line, and strengthen the enforcement of legal guidelines in opposition to 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 neighborhood supervisor — whom each Bungie and the courtroom 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 “wherein solely individuals of shade 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 house, leaving directions for the motive force to knock a minimum of 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 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 nicely, which may then use its assets to go after the perpetrator; 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 could appear odd to have a good time 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 assets to guard workers who face harassment as a part of their jobs. Bungie and its attorneys have damaged vital new floor that would enhance the extent of safety for employees within the recreation trade and past.