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As with most of these campaigns against individuals, this one too ended not with a bang but a whimper.<\/p>\n
After the judge ruled against Simpson, the only remaining issue was how much he would owe in damages.<\/p>\n
DirecTV had requested $20,000 under each of two separate laws, for a total of $40,000. The judge noted that Simpson had not \u201cused the devices commercially or for resale,\u201d so she declined to award the full request. Instead, DirecTV got $15,000 in damages under the first statute and $10,000 under the second, for a total of $25,000.<\/p>\n
The higher cost, though, came from legal fees. DirecTV submitted a motion for Simpson to pay its lawyers after his loss, and the judge agreed to a $33,678 legal bill.<\/p>\n
The court granted final judgment on November 29, 2005, ruling that \u201cthe Juice\u201d owed DirecTV a grand total of $58,678. It was pricey, yes\u2014but in a way, Simpson got off cheap. When the recording industry launched its own mass lawsuit campaign, college students and single moms were eventually hit with $675,000<\/a> or even $1.92 million verdicts<\/a>.<\/p>\n With that final judgment, another in the long string of court cases that defined Simpson\u2019s later years came to an end.<\/p>\n Simpson soon had bigger problems than TV piracy, though; two years later, in September 2007, he and some men with guns burst into a hotel room at the Palace Station in Las Vegas<\/a> and, in just six minutes, committed the acts that finally put him in prison.<\/p>\n Being branded a satellite TV pirate is not going to define O.J.\u2019s legacy, of course. At best, the story is a minor footnote. But it remains a fascinating example of what happens when an anti-piracy, mass-lawsuit campaign sweeps up a celebrity like \u201cthe Juice\u201d\u2014and squeezes him for $58,678.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n