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Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#281

Post by shadowgovt »

belval wrote: post #5

So 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?

In this particular venue, damages were determined by the jury (which is not the case in all states).

Relevant to that process, Jones took the stand in his own defense, to show remorse and indicate why the jury should find for a lower penalty, and... Did the opposite of that. He lost his temper and managed to strongly indicate he had learned nothing and showed no remorse. Juries tend to take a particularly dim view of such behavior (often even dimmer than a judge, which is one of the reasons so many states don't involve the jury in the process of assigning penalty).

Interestingly enough, the judge also has the authority to assign penalty here (Jones' behavior on the stand and in court was egregious) and has not done so yet. Her say comes soon.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#282

Post by myko »

sdtriton wrote: post #228

The people who released opioids upon the American public didn't get fines like this. Insane

> Insane

It's insane that they didn't.

If you look at the fine, you will see that many families were affected. There is nothing unreasonable about that amount of money awarded from that perspective.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#283

Post by zimpenfish »

sneak wrote: post #256
sdtriton wrote: post #228

The people who released opioids upon the American public didn't get fines like this. Insane

Cigarettes kill 7x as many as opiates in the USA every hour, day, week, month, and year. Those companies aren't even fined or put behind a prescription-wall.

Adding some numbers: [1] gives ~480k cigarette deaths, [2] gives 107k drug deaths with ~80k of those from opiods which is an approx 6:1 ratio (close enough!)

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/...

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#284

Post by ggm »

akerl_ wrote: post #236
ggm wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it would naturally lead to lawyers letters and probably your apology and a costs settlement on the steps of the courthouse. The settlement might be zero sum, but you would expect a competent lawyer to advise you to back down gracefully all things being equal, assuming you lacked any evidence for a truth defence. Oftentimes, the outcome isn't about winning in court. It's about the restitution of the potential harm…

No it wouldn’t. That’s what I’m saying.

It's not what you said. You said successfully suing. Most suits don't go to a win in court, they terminate before that, and terminate in lawyers letters before paperwork hits a court.

I am continuing to assert you're just wrong. I'm not a lawyer btw.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#285

Post by anigbrowl »

robswc wrote: post #82
probably_wrong wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the lawyers made in the previous case what I consider an interesting argument: Alex Jones claimed under oath that his show reaches (off the top of my head) about a hundred million people. So the lawyer argued that Alex Jones should pay $1 for every person who heard him lie about Sandy Hook. By this measure, if I intentionally harass someone on Twitter I'd have to pay the victim about $50 (on a good day). Since…

If those were the reasonable standards, every media-company would be broke. I'd argue traditional media reaches many more people and the impact of intentional lies is that much greater.

No they wouldn't. For most journalists, it's not hard to stick to good faith reporting. If you have evidence, you can present that. If you don't, you can report on a controversy (like when someone is accused of a crime) but be clear you're describing it without the ability to resolve/shed light on it. And when you do make mistakes, you should have a practice of correcting them and documenting the fact that you did so, so that your audience is about equally likely to encounter the correction as they were the mistaken report.

If you do that and have a track record of consistency, then your legal liability is pretty minimal.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#287

Post by norwalkbear »

lovich wrote: post #265
norwalkbear wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very uncharitable interpretation. Whether you like it or not, Alex Jones is insanely popular and so is Joe Rogan. Their audiences votes and can certainly tip elections. I bet you never thought Trump would win in 2016. I knew that race would be close because I understand the mood of average Americans better than you.

What are you implying then? That if someone gets popular enough we should all just roll over and let them do as they please? I’m failing to see a different interpretation when you end with > Just some things to think about. Unintended consequences.

Fining him nearly 1 billion dollars is excessive and sends a wrong moral signal to the moderate public.

It makes the punishment look unusual and petty.

Can anyone justify why the amount should be that high? Does he have 1 billion dollars?

I would have fined him 200million something he might actually have.

Using the law to make an example out of someone requires moral authority and the population to agree. COVID has shown us, America is split on that.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#288

Post by Hamuko »

donatj wrote: post #250
Taniwha wrote: post #72

"CIVIL-RIGHTS LAWYER NARRATOR: But punitive-damages awards aren’t dischargeable in bankruptcy. So Alex Jones will be paying off these debts from wage garnishments, attachments, & sheriff’s sales of his stuff for the rest of his wretched, pathetic, worthless life." from: https://twitter.com/SubodhChandra/status/1580285453348921344

Honest question - could Jones sue Subodh Chandra for defamation given that his life was just valued at at least a billion dollars by a jury?

Pretty sure his life wasn't just valued at a billion dollars, but rather the amount of damage he has caused.

But I'll be generous and give that lawsuit a 0.01% chance.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#290

Post by pdpi »

The jury in the Texas case awarded the family around $50M, and the $965M in this case is a bit over 2x that, at $120M per family. So it's definitely a lot higher and I'm curious to see if there's anything that caused that.

More importantly, though, is that the Texas damages were split into ~$4.5M as compensatory damages (this is the part where you make amends for the harm you've caused), and the remaining ~$45M as punitive damages (the part where you). Texas has a cap on how much you can _actually_ be forced to pay in punitive damages, and it is specifically forbidden to instruct juries on the existence of this cap, so as to avoid tempting the jury to tack their actual punitive damages onto the compensatory damages number.

The amount in this case will almost certainly going to have a similar-ish split, and Connecticut is likely to have similar-ish laws in place. I'm not sure how this all works, but there's also the interesting detail that, if this was just one judgment, the punitive damages cap might apply to the aggregate amount rather than per plaintiff (So: if there is a $1M cap, does that mean he pays no more than $1M, so each family gets $125k, or each family can't get more than $1M, and he pays $8M).

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