The first jury to hear the case in 2007 found Thomas-Rasset of copyrighted works and awarded the music companies a total of $222,000 in damages.

That verdict was later set-aside on a legal technicality and the case went before a second jury in 2009. This time, the jury slapped Thomas-Rasset with a in statutory damages, or $80,000 per infringed work.

The District Court judge presiding over the case reduced the amount to $54,000 after Thomas-Rasset's argued that the damages were totally out of line with any actual damages the music labels might have suffered as the result of her activities.

This time, the recording companies appealed the verdict arguing among other things that the relevant copyright laws in the case provided for the much higher damages originally awarded by the jury.

In 2010, the third jury to hear the case awarded the music companies damages of $62,500 per song for a total $1.5 million. That fine too was reduced to $54,000 by a district court judge who held the amount was the maximum permissible under the Due Process Clause. The clause basically holds that punitive damages must be not be unreasonably excessive and must always be proportional to the actual damages suffered by an entity.