Plagiarism in a PhD thesis at Ohio State

A graduate of the Ohio State University (my alma mater) has not only had her degree revoked after a university disciplinary committee found her guilty of plagiarism, she has been ordered to pay $15,000 in damages to the author of the thesis she plagiarized, according to a story in the OSU student newspaper, The Lantern. The article links to court documents giving about 17 pages' worth of examples of copied chunks of text, and the filing states that these are not the only examples. Interestingly, though, it appears that the two theses were on different topics. It was therefore possible to use the same extensive passages of language to frame two separate pieces of research. I'm not sure what that tells us, but it seems to raise some interesting questions.