An nameless reader quotes a report from Polygon: Bungie has gained nearly $500,000 in damages from a Future 2 participant who harassed one in all its neighborhood managers and his spouse with abusive, racist, and distressing calls and messages, and despatched an unsolicited pizza order to their dwelling in a fashion designed to intimidate and frighten the couple. In accordance with members of Bungie’s authorized group, the judgment from a Washington state court docket units vital precedents that can 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 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 “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 dwelling, leaving directions for the driving force to knock not less than 5 occasions, loudly, to make the intrusion as horrifying as attainable.
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 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 offender; 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 — moderately 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 vital new floor that might enhance the extent of safety for employees within the sport business and past.
