[fatso]

I take your point about scarcity of judicial resources, but I think it is misplaced. Just because some of these individuals elected not to defend does not mean the process was futile or that Burke shouldn't exercise his legal rights.

I would argue the individual defamers were in fact publicly impugned. There was a suit filed outlining Burke's allegations and some of those defendants chose not to respond to them. Because of their choice, he has obtained judgment against them and so they may be 'punished' in some way. It is still available to him to try and enforce that judgment, including trying to personally identify those individuals - and he'll have a long time to do that. Will he be able to do so? It is certainly not impossible.

Further, there are still other defendants, some of whom have been personally identified. It remains to see what they will do in terms of defending.

Finally, its a defamation case which is solely about reputation. I would argue much of the remedy exists in filing his claim and obtaining default judgment, all of which is public record. No one ever really makes that much money or obtains apologies in defamation awards anyway, so to the extent you may think such remedies are more appropriate, it makes no difference as they are not available anyway.