Jury Awards $1.68 Billion to Ladies in Toback Sexual Abuse Case, NPR Studies
New York, NY – April 9, 2025 – A New York jury has ordered author and director James Toback to pay a staggering $1.68 billion to 40 ladies who accused him of sexual abuse and harassment spanning over 35 years, marking one of many largest verdicts within the historical past of the #MeToo motion. The choice, introduced late Wednesday, stems from a lawsuit filed in Manhattan in December 2022 beneath New York’s Grownup Survivors Act, which quickly lifted statutes of limitations for civil sexual assault claims.
Toback, an 80-year-old Oscar-nominated screenwriter for 1991’s Bugsy, confronted allegations of luring younger ladies with guarantees of movie roles, solely to topic them to sexual acts, coercion, and psychological abuse. The plaintiffs’ authorized staff, led by Brad Beckworth of Nix Patterson LLP, uncovered a decades-long sample of predatory habits, with incidents relationship again to the late Nineteen Seventies. “This verdict is about justice,” Beckworth advised NPR. “It’s about taking energy again from abusers and their enablers and returning it to these he tried to silence.”
The jury awarded $280 million in compensatory damages and $1.4 billion in punitive damages after a seven-day damages trial, which Toback didn’t attend. His absence led to a default judgment in January, following failed makes an attempt to dismiss the case whereas representing himself. Toback has constantly denied the accusations, claiming any encounters have been consensual or that he by no means met the ladies, citing medical circumstances like diabetes and a coronary heart ailment as rendering such acts “biologically unattainable.”
The case echoes the 2017 Los Angeles Instances exposé that first spotlighted Toback’s alleged misconduct, with 38 ladies initially coming ahead—later ballooning to over 300—prompting comparisons to Harvey Weinstein. Hollywood figures like Julianne Moore and Ellen Pompeo shared their very own unsettling encounters with Toback, amplifying the #MeToo wave. Although Los Angeles prosecutors declined to press prison prices in 2018 attributable to expired statutes, the New York lawsuit gave survivors a brand new avenue for redress.
Lead plaintiff Mary Monahan referred to as the award “validation,” telling NPR, “For many years, I carried this trauma in silence. As we speak, a jury believed us. This verdict is a declaration: we’re not disposable.” Whereas Toback’s web value—estimated within the low tens of millions—makes full restoration unlikely, attorneys say the symbolic weight of the ruling is the precedence. “We’ll attempt to acquire what we are able to,” mentioned co-counsel Ross Leonoudakis, “however that is about sending a message.”
As posts on X mirror, public response ranges from shock on the sum—“$1.68 billion? Who is that this man?”—to skepticism about enforcement: “Good luck gathering from an 80-year-old has-been.” Toback’s legacy, as soon as tied to movies like The Choose-up Artist and Two Ladies and a Man, now stands overshadowed by a verdict that underscores accountability in an business nonetheless reckoning with its previous.
