A jury in New York awarded $1.7 billion in damages to 40 women who sued the former movie director and writer James Toback over allegations of sexual assault, lawyers for the plaintiffs said.
Mr. Toback, once a Hollywood fixture known for writing “Bugsy” and directing “The Pick-up Artist,” had been defending himself against the lawsuit for a couple of years but more recently had stopped participating in the case. He has denied the allegations against him.
A judge entered a default judgment against him in January and a jury trial was held to determine how much money Mr. Toback would owe each plaintiff. On Wednesday, the jurors arrived at $42 million each, said Brad Beckworth, one of the lawyers who represents the women.
Mr. Toback, 80, has described himself in court papers as being “financially destitute,” and it is unclear how much of the judgment he will be able to pay.
The women’s allegations span from the late 1970s to the mid-2000s. Many of their accounts involve Mr. Toback approaching them in public, setting up meetings to discuss potential acting roles and then assaulting them at the meetings.
Mr. Toback, who was accused in a Los Angeles Times article of being a serial harasser toward the start of the #MeToo movement in 2017, declined to comment in a text message on Thursday. He had been representing himself in court, including taking depositions of accusers himself. But he wrote in court papers last year that persistent health problems had made it difficult for him to keep up with the case.
Mr. Beckworth said that during the weeklong trial to determine the financial damages, held in New York State Supreme Court, jurors heard the accounts of all 40 women, either in live testimony or from video depositions. Mr. Toback was not in the courtroom.
One of the plaintiffs, Marianne Hettinger, said in court papers that in 1988, when she was about 25, Mr. Toback approached her on the street and said he wanted to cast her in a movie, showing his Directors Guild of America card as proof that he was a filmmaker. At a meeting at his apartment, according to court papers, he held her in place as he masturbated, and then forced her to touch his penis and humped her leg, telling her it was his “process” as a director.
Another plaintiff, Mary Monahan, had a similar account. She said that in the late 1990s, Mr. Toback approached her on the street in New York and invited her to audition for his next film. At the meeting, according to court papers, Ms. Monahan took off her clothes after Mr. Toback requested it, calling it a “trust exercise.” The lawsuit said he then proceeded to hump her leg and ejaculate.
In a statement after the verdict, Ms. Monahan said: “This verdict is more than a number — it’s a declaration. We are not disposable. We are not liars.”
In 2017, shortly after the revelations about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse, allegations of sexual harassment against Mr. Toback were reported in The Los Angeles Times. He told the newspaper at the time that he had never met any of the accusers or that if he did, it “was for five minutes and have no recollection.” He later gave a combative interview to Rolling Stone in which he was confronted with a couple of the specific accusations and replied: “These are people I don’t know, and it’s things I never would have done. And it’s just not worth talking about. It’s idiotic.”
In 2018, prosecutors in Los Angeles said they would not file charges against him in five cases in which he had been accused of sexual abuse because the statute of limitations had expired.
The lawsuit in New York against Mr. Toback was filed after state legislation, called the Adult Survivors Act, gave plaintiffs an opportunity to sue over sexual abuse allegations even if the statute of limitations had passed. The suit included accusations from 45 women but five withdrew before the trial.
The suit initially named the Harvard Club of New York City as a defendant because five plaintiffs said Mr. Toback had sexually assaulted them there. The suit accused the club, which terminated Mr. Toback’s membership in 2017, of allowing abuse to go on “unchecked” for decades. The club denied that accusation and last year, the plaintiffs removed the club as a defendant.
Last year, Mr. Toback sought to significantly delay the court proceedings because of his health but was unsuccessful.
“The effort to move this case forward, despite my inability to appear to defend myself, flouts any common understanding of fairness,” he wrote in a June 2024 filing.
Mr. Beckworth said the jury awarded the plaintiffs $280 million in compensatory damages for their suffering and $1.4 billion in punitive damages, which required a finding that the conduct was “wanton and reckless, or malicious.” He said the next step would be assessing Mr. Toback’s assets, saying, “We’ll try to get these women as much as we can.”
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
