Film director ordered to pay $1.68B to 40 women in sexual assault suit

$1.6 billion. That's not the budget of a blockbuster movie, but what a New York jury says director James Toback owes dozens of women who say he used Hollywood dreams as bait

The massive payout is what attorneys believe to be one of the largest sexual abuse verdicts in New York state history and one of the biggest in the Me Too era

Toback, best known for films like Two Girls and a Guy, and the pickup artist, was one of the earliest public figures named when the Me Too movement gained traction in 2017

According to the complaint, for nearly 40 years, Toback quote, used his reputation, power and influence to lure a young woman, including plaintiffs through fraud, coercion, force and intimidation into compromising situations where he falsely imprisoned, sexually abused, assaulted and or battered them

The lawsuit was filed in December 2022 under the New York's Adult Survivors Act, or ASA, by 15 named plaintiffs and 23 Jane Does, totaling 38 women

By the time the case went to trial, two more women joined, bringing the total to 40

The ASA created a one-year window for adult survivors of sexual abuse to file civil lawsuits, no matter how long ago the alleged incidents happened

Other high-profile cases filed under the ASA Act include singer Cassie Ventura's 2023 lawsuit

against Sean Diddy Combs. Her claim, filed just before the ASA deadline, sparked a wave of new

spanned from the late 1970s to the mid-2000s. The sexual assaults reportedly occurred in places

like the hallways and stairwells of the Harvard Club, but also in public parks, his editing studios

and even his mother's apartment. The complaint says if women refused, Toback threatened to

blacklist them from the industry, have them kidnapped, physically harmed, or even killed

According to the New York Times, Toback acted as his own attorney, but failed to keep up with

the case citing health issues on Wednesday he was ordered to pay the $1.68 billion to the 40 woman

who came forward. The lead plaintiff who launched the case says in a press release

this is not just a verdict, it's validation. For decades I carried this trauma in silence

and today a jury believed me, believed us. That changes everything. This verdict is more than a