After a seven -day trial in New York, James Toback was sentenced on Wednesday to pay $ 1.68 billion to 40 women who accused the disgrace director of sexual harassment.
The jury granted complainants a total of $ 280 million in compensatory damages and $ 1.4 billion for punitive damages.
“We have very clearly asked the jury to send a message to the whole of the industry that the #MeToo movement is unfinished and in some respects already forgotten, and that they had to hold the line and leave everyone from New York to Hollywood in Washington, DC, and between the two, know that this type of driving is not ok and will not be accepted, period,” Los Angeles Times.
According to VarietyToback, 80 years old, did not attend the trial and previously issued a refusal of coverage, including an assertion that all sexual activity was consensual. The point of sale added that the director acted as his own lawyer at the time and did not appear for preliminary hearings, which led to a default judgment against him.
In October 2017, the Times The first reported that Toback had been accused of sexual harassment over four decades after talking about the director’s alleged victims at 38. The investigation arrived only a few weeks after dozens of actresses brought similar complaints against the producer and the sex offender Harvey Weinstein.
According to the timesToback has often approached younger women not asked in New York, telling them that he was a famous director and said to some of the women, often non-actors, that they would be perfect for his next film. In almost all cases, Toback would have sailed in the conversation of the role of the young woman in a future film to sexual questions. He was accused of harassing them sexually at the Harvard Club and other places in Manhattan, including his mounting studio, his apartment, his hotel rooms, his public parks and even his mother’s apartment. Some women allegedly alleged that Toback masturbated in front of them or tried to force them to sex.
The complainants initially continued the Harvard Club of New York for authorizing “Toback’s abuses to continue without control” and then interrupted the case against the establishment in January 2024.
Toback, who won an Oscar nomination for the 1991 editorial staff Bugpreviously denied the following allegations Time‘Report, tell Roller In 2017: “The idea that I would offer a game to anyone for any other reason than for me, it would be the best of all those I could find is so disgusting for me.”
After the verdict on Wednesday, Mary Monahan, one of the complainants, said Time“It will be his inheritance, absolutely”, adding: “It will not be Bug. And it validates extremely. A jury heard us and a jury believed us. »»
