Fordham Law alumna Elisa D’Amico ’06 was featured in a New York Times article about a recent revenge porn case that she won on behalf of a client.
Shortly after a California woman and her boyfriend ended their relationship in 2013, he began to post sexual photographs and videos of her on pornography websites and to impersonate her in online dating forums, according to court documents. He threatened to make her life “so miserable she would want to kill herself.”
Strangers sent her explicit texts and emails. Some said they were on their way to her home. She began to fear for her life.
In 2014, the woman, who was listed as Jane Doe in court documents to protect her identity, sued her former boyfriend, David K. Elam II, in United States District Court in California to get him to stop. Four years passed, until the court awarded her $6.4 million on April 4, in one of the biggest judgments ever in a so-called revenge porn case.
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“The law in this area is imperfect and has been for some time,” said Elisa D’Amico, a lawyer who specializes in internet privacy and abuse and who worked on the case. It is, she added, “lagging behind technology.”
The California case was one of the first lawsuits filed by the Cyber Civil Rights Legal Project, an initiative started in 2014 by K&L Gates, a Pittsburgh law firm, to litigate against online harassment and the nonconsensual posting of explicit material, often involving a former girlfriend or a spouse. Ms. D’Amico, in the firm’s Miami office, is a leader of the initiative.