I'm curious if this decision will play any part in the current defamation suit between News Corp and Dominion.
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
#362Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#363"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?
Anyone can sue anyone. But he'd lose.
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No, it seems like he has personal assets in the high tens of millions of dollars, and that Free Speech Systems was probably worth into the 9 figures. If the verdict stands, all of that will get wiped out, and the question remaining will be whether the damages, which stem from an intentional tort, will be dischargeable when Jones is forced into bankruptcy non-ironically, rather than using it as a ploy. Still a lot of…
This always confused me, if someone is wiped out in this way how are they able to survive in the aftermath? Isn't this effectively sentencing them to homelessness forever, or is there a floor value in these wins that's always respected which accounts for some minimal cost amount of food+rent?
And doesn't the responsibility to pay up remain for money made after the bankruptcy event? Or does declaring bankruptcy ensure a clean slate such that income from new ventures is safe from being confiscated?
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#365The 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 pu…
> Connecticut is likely to have similar-ish laws in place
NAL, but according to the New York Times, this doesn’t appear to be the case.
> This case presented the greatest financial risk to Mr. Jones, because he was found liable of violating Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act, by using lies about the shooting to sell products on Infowars. There is no cap on punitive damages under that law.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/12/us/alex-jones-verdic...
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes it is. Why didn't Wolfgang Halbig get hit with the same?
put it this way: I have never in my life heard of this man, and I doubt most people have either. Alex Jones has somewhere in the region of 100m viewers
Correct. That's the point. If free speech is based on how much you make or how many people listen to you then it's not free speech it's a system for extortion.
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
The standard relevant in most defamation cases is recklessness, not negligence.
I'm not a lawyer, do I can't say with much confidence what most "defamation cases" are. But LII at least suggests that the law as written, is about negligence: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation EDIT: According to LII on libel: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/libel , there seems to be different awards for negligence, recklessness, and malice. Negligence is capped at actual injury, while recklessness and above…
(1) No, again, the damages announced today are compensatory, not punitive.
(2) If we're talking about the "actual malice" standard, then the standard is recklessness, not negligence.
(3) None of that matters here, because Jones lost the trial by default (the evidence would have clearly shown Jones to have met the actual malice standard, but it's a moot point).
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#368To 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…
I consider myself a free speech purist. I also think defamation and libel laws are required.
I think this is the system working as it should.
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#369"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?
Worthless life is clearly opinion.
Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
#370Quoted post unavailable.
This isn't about free speech. It's about defamation.