Capitol V. Thomas

Capitol v. Thomas (previously named Virgin v. Thomas) was the first file-sharing copyright infringement lawsuit in the United States brought by major record labels to be tried before a jury. After declining a settlement offer of $5,000, the defendant, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, was found liable in a 2007 trial for infringing copyright on 24 songs and ordered to pay $222,000 in statutory damages. The court later granted her motion for a new trial because of an error in its jury instructions. In a second trial in 2009, before which she again declined a settlement offer (this time for $25,000) a jury again found against Thomas-Rasset, this time awarding $1,920,000 in statutory damages, a sum that was later reduced to $54,000. The record labels refused to accept the reduced award, so a third trial solely to determine damages was held in November 2010, resulting in a jury award of $1.5 million against Thomas-Rasset. In July 2011, the court again reduced the $1.5 million jury award to $54,000, or $2,250 per song. The record labels appealed this decision. On September 11, 2012, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the District Court's reduction of the award, and reinstated the award of $222,000, which was the amount awarded by the jury in the first trial.