After WhatsApp won its lawsuit against NSO Group (as seen in this topic), a seperate damages trial has once again dealt a blow against the spyware company. A judge ruled that they cannot identify the suspected customers or victims as evidence raised during the trial.
Under the order, NSO Group is prohibited from presenting evidence about its customers’ identities, implying the targeted WhatsApp users are suspected or actual criminals, or alleging that WhatsApp had insufficient security protections.
It’s a ruling that strikes at NSO Group’s fundamental strategy in the case, said Natalia Krapiva, senior tech-legal counsel at Access Now.
“This ruling is a win not just for WhatsApp but also for WhatsApp’s users who were victims of Pegasus hacking,” she said. “NSO’s strategy has been to try to attack the reputation of civil society victims, claiming that they were in fact criminals and terrorists and therefore deserved to be hacked. The court’s ruling will make it very difficult for NSO to launch such attacks. The trial will have to be focused on the conduct of NSO Group, not its clients or victims. As it should.”
NSO Group has been ordered to pay $167 million dollars!
A jury has awarded WhatsApp $167 million in punitive damages in a case the company brought against Israel-based NSO Group for exploiting a software vulnerability that hijacked the phones of thousands of users.
The verdict, reached Tuesday, comes as a major victory not just for Meta-owned WhatsApp but also for privacy- and security-rights advocates who have long criticized the practices of NSO and other exploit sellers. The jury also awarded WhatsApp $444 million in compensatory damages.
Now they’re trying to get a new trial because the damages awarded was far too excessive? Reeks of desperation…
Calling the damages ruling “outrageous,” “blatantly unlawful,” and “unconstitutionally excessive,” NSO Group now wants the judge overseeing the case to reduce the amount, or order a new trial.
On Thursday, the company filed a motion for a new trial or a “remittitur,” which is a procedure that allows a court to reduce an excessive verdict.
The filing was first reported by legal news outlets Law360 and MLex.
In the court filing, NSO Group’s lawyers said that the “outrageous punitive award exceeds the maximum lawful punitive damages award in this case by many orders of magnitude.” The lawyers argued that the amount ordered in punitive damages — the $167 million — violates limits that say the jury should not award damages “greater than four times compensatory damages,” which were $444,719 in this case.
The lawyers also argued that the jury’s award is “unlawful because it reflects the improper desire to bankrupt NSO out of general hostility toward its business activities other than the limited conduct for which punitive damages could be awarded in this case.”