A New York jury has awarded James Toback’s accusers a sizable sum.
The Two Girls and a Guy director was ordered to pay $1.68 billion to 40 women who accused him of sexual assault between 1979 and 2014, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers.
The April 9 judgment, which has not been made available by the court, included $280 million in compensatory damages and $1.4 billion in punitive damages, attorney Brad Beckworth said in a release obtained by E! News.
“This verdict is about justice,” he emphasized. “But more importantly, it’s about taking power back from the abusers—and their and enablers—and returning it to those he tried to control and silence.”
Beckworth, who in an interview described the jury’s judgement as among the largest in New York state history, added that he was “very proud” of his clients’ “brutally honest” testimony, calling it “empowering—for them and for all women.”
Toback, 80, who received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for writing the 1991 drama Bugsy, repeatedly denied that he “committed any sexual offense” and said that “any sexual encounter or contact between Plaintiffs and Defendant was consensual,” according to court documents obtained by the Associated Press. He most recently represented himself in the case, per the outlet.
E! News has reached out to Toback’s lawyers for comment but has not heard back.
The lawsuit was initially filed in 2022 under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which opened a one-year window for survivors of sexual assault to sue their alleged assailants regardless of when the abuse occurred.
It remains to be seen whether the filmmaker will be able to pay the 10-figure sum as he has described himself in court filings obtained by The New York Times as “financially destitute.”
Toback first faced allegations of sexual misconduct in 2017 amid the #MeToo movement, when dozens of women including Selma Blair and Rachel McAdams came forward with their accounts. By 2018, no less than 395 women had accused Toback of harassment, according to the Los Angeles Times. Prosecutors declined to file charges against him at the time as the accusations fell outside the statue of limitations, per the New York Times.
