§ 98C.005.Damages

The most distinctive damages provision in this group of chapters.

A prevailing claimant shall be awarded actual damages, including expenditures made by the claimant related to counseling, identity theft, or libel. The defendant's profits attributable to the impersonation may be considered in computing actual damages.

The three named expenditures describe the actual consequences of a convincing impersonation: psychological treatment, the cost of repairing a stolen identity, and the cost of correcting reputational damage.

The profits clause is unusual. A claimant may bring the defendant's gain into the damages calculation, which is restitutionary reasoning inside a compensatory award. It matters where an impersonation was commercially motivated — a fake endorsement account, for instance — and the claimant's own loss is hard to quantify.

Subsection (b) sets a floor on exemplary damages: a prevailing claimant may recover exemplary damages of not less than $500.

A minimum exemplary award is rare. It guarantees something beyond compensation once exemplary damages are awarded at all, which matters where actual damages are minimal.

Subsection (c) is the other distinctive feature: the court shall award costs and reasonable attorney's fees to the prevailing party — either party.

The trafficking, compelled prostitution, and intimate visual material chapters award fees to a prevailing claimant. This one is two-way, so a defendant who defeats the claim recovers its fees. Read with the satire exception, that is a meaningful deterrent to using the chapter against protected expression.