Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
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Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#2That's a bit nuts
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#3While nothing can bring back their children, siblings, or classmates, one hopes (but doesn't expect) that this will help consign a particularly vile and repugnant conspiracy theory to the dustbin of polite discourse.
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#4This is great news, but we should temper our expectations: It's likely that Jones will appeal and keep this tied up for years before he has to pay anything. Even if he is eventually obligated to pay some amount, it is unlikely to be what the jury just decided. And even if it is what the jury just decided, Jones' company is already "bankrupt" (yet still on the air) and he will almost certainly avoid liability through all the useful tools and entities available to a person who has hundreds of millions of dollars in the first place. And through all this, he will probably remain on the air spouting his lies - as he is literally right now as I write this post.
In sum, it's good to know that we're trying to hold him to account, but it seems unlikely that this stops him in any material way from just continuing on the way he has been.
Our system is not setup for situations that involve faith as bad as Jones', on the part of people who have not themselves committed an obvious violent crime.
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#5So how were the damage calculated? I get that this guy is a nutjob but how can saying something is a hoax get you a 1B fine?
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#6I'm sure that will get reduced by the judge based on whatever state law, but it's a huge signal to Jones that he's an absolute monster.
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#7So how were the damage calculated? I get that this guy is a nutjob but how can saying something is a hoax get you a 1B fine?
probably because his fans was harassing them even after they moved
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#8This is great news, but we should temper our expectations: It's likely that Jones will appeal and keep this tied up for years before he has to pay anything. Even if he is eventually obligated to pay some amount, it is unlikely to be what the jury just decided. And even if it is what the jury just decided, Jones' company is already "bankrupt" (yet still on the air) and he will almost certainly avoid liability through…
Remarkably, I think this is all economic damages --- they haven't reached the punitive damages phase. Furthermore, Connecticut doesn't have caps on compensatory damage for emotional distress.
So this isn't quite like the Texas situation, where Jones attorneys successfully convinced the jury to award relatively small compensatory damages and large punitive damages --- those Texas punitive damages will get knocked way back, because there are local and federal caps on the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages.
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#9So how were the damage calculated? I get that this guy is a nutjob but how can saying something is a hoax get you a 1B fine?
Punitive damages were a large fraction of the award.
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#10I think that is grossly excessive.