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by downandout 3137 days ago
This woman likely does not have enough money to compensate him for the actual damages that would be awarded at trial should he prevail, let alone any punitive damages. Lost potential earnings etc. would likely be in the billions in this case. For all intents and purposes, the lawsuit and any money he did recover would be meaningless except perhaps as a personal vindication.

His career ended when she made the accusation. The standard of proof in these cases seems to be “I said he did it,” and that is wrong when the penalty seems to be instant banishment from your career and society in general.
3 comments
opportune 3137 days ago
Well, yes, which is exactly my point. A victim is heavily discentivized from coming forward with an accusation if there's a chance they will be financially ruined from it, even if it's true. This means that wealthy and powerful people with great lawyers are insulated from all but the most clear-cut cases, which is definitely not a desirable system.

There's also the fact that wealthy people can settle a sexual misconduct case even if they did commit it. You shouldn't be able to pay someone $900k to make an accusation go away and then face no criminal repercussions. Even if the victim is ok with that, the perpetrator is still free to harm other victims.

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ScottBurson 3137 days ago
> His career ended when she made the accusation.

That doesn't seem to me to be true. DFJ carried out some kind of investigation, as the article mentions. I don't agree with your assertion that any evidence they found would have been leaked by now (or would necessarily ever be leaked). And I can't believe that DFJ's investigation into such an important person in their organization would have been cursory, nor that they would fire him without substantial cause.

We don't know what the investigation found, and we may never know. That doesn't mean there wasn't anything.

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s73ver_ 3137 days ago
That is an extremely simplified version of what happened. She did far, far more than just say, "He touched me." And those in the company felt the accusation credible enough to choose to no longer associate with him.

I'm sorry, but the "What about the men?" take is quite childish, and treats women like they have cooties or something.

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