 A month later, Thomas-Rasset's attorneys requested that the court reduce the award to either zero or an amount the court believes is constitutional, arguing that the Due Process Clause had been violated because the plaintiffs hadn't proven that the defendant, specifically, had caused them any actual harm, only that file sharing, in general, had.In July 2011, the court ruled that the $1.5 million award was "so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense and obviously unreasonable.