Bungie has won nearly $500,000 in damages in a lawsuit against a Destiny 2 player who harassed one of the company’s community managers.
The Washington State Court’s decision includes language which greatly expands the ability of the law and of companies to protect employees against work-related harassment, and to crack down on online harassment in general.
The defendant, Jesse James Comer, had directed targeted racist harassment against the Bungie community manager after they posted art made by a Black Destiny 2 fan. The harassment included leaving bigoted and threatening messages in the community manager’s voicemail, threatening their wife over text, and ordering a pizza to their home with instructions for the delivery person to knock as loudly and threateningly as possible.
In a Twitter thread following the ruling, Kathryn Tewson, a paralegal who worked on the case, outlined the numerous significant decisions by the judge. The most significant among these is the recognition of harassment of employees due to the proceedings of their work as a damage to the company recognized as an entirely new tort. This essentially means that, rather than needing to pursue damages for harassment on the grounds of other violations such as invasion of privacy, this kind of harassment may be recognized as damaging in and of itself by the court.
“By recognizing a new tort based on the Washington criminal statutes outlawing cyber and telephone harassment, the Court has created a path for those with the resources to identify stochastic terrorists and hold them accountable to do exactly that and recover their costs in court,” Tewson explained.
Other big anti-harassment wins Tewson identified include judicial recognition of patterns of online harassment escalating to real life altercations, a ruling that doxing and harassment of employees is an unfair trade practice affecting the public interest, and a finding that employees who are working from home still are owed protection from reasonably foreseeable harm by their employers.
The lawyers working on the case have assessed this as a landmark victory against online harassment. Bungie’s attorney Dylan Schmeyer celebrated the success on Twitter.
“Congratulations to my clients, who stood up and fought for something that mattered. Congratulations to my team. We made law. And a hearty fuck you to the dregs of digital society who do real harm and believe themselves above responsibility, beyond accountability. You aren’t.”