It is incredibly hard in the US legal system to make a defamation claim stick. Relative to other nations (in particular the UK, which the US shaped some of its law in direct reaction to around 1776), there are several defenses to defamation. The fact that in spite of all those assume-no-malice protections for a defendant this lawsuit still found him guilty says a lot about this case specifically, and very little abou…
It's so much easier in the UK they literally have a term for it: "libel tourism"
This 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…
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This isn't "saying the wrong words". This is a man who profited to the tune of (according to his financial audit) $818k PER DAY over the course of a decade by spreading lies about parents who had the misfortune of having their elementary-school-aged kids shot up by a highly disturbed individual.
I'm less certain. It looks like this mostly hinges on the bankruptcy filings, which weren't going great for Jones (as, of course, they should not, as they seem pretty bogus).
Bankruptcy notwithstanding, he almost certainly does not have $1B. He's a celebrity figure of sorts, but pretty fringe. It's a symbolic victory. He'll have to liquidate the bulk of whatever assets he may have, and the plaintiffs will get a few dollars when it's all said and done.
He will never possibly be able to pay this amount. It's just theater and will never happen.
He may not pay that amount, but he will spend the rest of his life bankrupt or spending most of his energy avoiding judgement, which is a not unreasonable fate for people who make a living lying, cheating, and stealing.
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.
Anyone can sue anyone at any time. I can sue you claiming that this comment you made is defamatory towards me.
I’m saying that the suit wouldn’t end with a settlement or an apology or me doing anything; it would be thrown out for not meeting the standard for defamation. Tort is relatively boring, IMO, but the standards for various suits are well defined and publicly documented.
As someone who's been closely following the Infowars/Free Speech Systems trials (watched all the depos, trial footage, etc.), all I can say is that I'm glad these families are finally getting justice. Even though I'm sure it'll be tied up in appeals for awhile (and reduced on appeal), hopefully it'll prevent future harassment campaigns against families when tragedies occur. And before anyone says "but why wasn't Jone…
First amendment isn’t under attack. Alex Jones isn’t being punished by the govt. Ge attacked people, they responded back. Defamation law has always existed and people can always sue you for libel and slander.
> Defamation law has always existed and people can always sue you for libel and slander.
But a $965 million dollar judgment for libel or slander would have to be justified by comparable damages. That isn't the case here.
The framers of the First Amendment understood and accepted the tort of defamation.
Yes indeed. They would have been very pleased with someone being charged 1 billion dollars for saying that a single event didn't happen. Clearly they would have agreed that Jones is liable for the actions of his viewers. It's all right there in the founding documents.
Oh no! The Founders would be displeased! I'm so tired of this kind of argument, as if we should forever substitute our own judgement with games of "what would The Founders want?" They were men, some were even great men, but men nonetheless. Don't worship them like gods. If there's something particularly great about the founders of the USA, it was that, one, they understood human imperfection, including their own, and two, they knew human societies change over time and so must their laws. They therefore built checks and balances into our system of government, and they put in mechanisms for change into the Constitution. So let's argue about the merits of laws or societal standards, but let's stop using the putative preferences of the founders like they mean anything. It's no better than when charlatans say "God wants this, God wants that" in order to legitimize their own opinions and actions.
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.
It's honestly pretty hard to work out what you're trying to assert here. The parent commenter is trying, reasonably, to establish the distinction between "lying" and "defamation". It seems like you're saying "being sued is so expensive the distinction doesn't matter". Ok, sure? That doesn't have anything to do with what they're saying, and, in the context of the grandparent comment --- about libel laws being tightened up --- isn't responsive there either.
(A distinctive feature of modern libel law is SLAPP, which permits fee recovery for defamation suits that aren't well-founded, but that works against the I argument I think but am not sure you are trying to make.)
To the free speech purists in this thread, I have a hypothetical I'm curious about: What if it happened to you? Let's imagine that a media source with millions of viewers - like a local news channel, for example, or a radio show, went live with a story that had specific and false allegations that you did something odious. Like they said you were a cannibal or a pedophile or something like that. And as a result, you w…
What if you performed simple public records requests and realized that this whole event stinks to high heaven and that it was immediately politicized by politicians and billionaire media elites to suppress the rights of American citizens? There always has to be room to question events that dominate the news cycle.