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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

#371

Post by polotics »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #297
darth_avocado wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Comparable damage? Can you imagine your young daughter one days goes to school, never comes back because she bled to death in a corridor there, and then for years you get attacked by strangers claiming you made it all up and are a fake? One thing I really don't understand about the US of A is, while it is abominously violent, still, a pork like Alex Jones hasn't been physically attacked by anyone. It's like there's a complete split in society somehow. In my books comparable damage would be everything and all money he owns, plus any he will, minus maybe $9 per day. Couldn't the jury have voted for such a verdict, why does it have to be an amount, why not an "everything"?

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

#372

Post by shadowgovt »

entiex wrote: post #335
shadowgovt wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But these aren't puntive damages, they're compensatory damages, and plainly excessive ones at that. Alex Jones level of remorse has no bearing on the level of damage he caused, and so should have no bearing on the amount of compensatory damages. To the extent that they did, that's an injustice. These damages are absolutely insane for emotional distress and defamation. The average lifetime earnings of a US citizen are…

> Alex Jones level of remorse has no bearing on the level of damage he caused

That's an excellent legal argument, is the kind of thing that could probably win before a judge... And has no bearing on what a jury finds. In general, the reasoning of a jury is private to the jury. They can award maximum damages because they think Jones is ugly (all you have to do is get fourteen people to agree that's a fair thing to do to the man; hypothetically, the averaging effect over so many folks is a back-stop. That back-stop backfires if the defendant is particularly loathsome; recall how long it took to seat a jury for Martin Shkreli).

This is why damages are, in so many places, not put before a jury.

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

#374

Post by nikanj »

bdcravens wrote: post #322
bruceb wrote: post #15

This title is so misleading, "to pay" and "told to pay" are not remotely the same. There is no chance Alex Jones will pay this amount. Actual headline is: Alex Jones told to pay $965m damages to Sandy Hook victims' families @dang pls fix.

Articles report on fines, salaries, etc all the time, often with an element of payment in the future. "Facebook fined..." and "Facebook told to pay a fine..." have little difference, and I don't see many arguing the semantics of those articles.

The difference is, Facebook would probably pay the fine. Alex Jones probably won’t

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

#375

Post by tptacek »

pen2l wrote: post #364
tptacek wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm no expert but I think the general flow is that you wipe out all the debtor's assets, and then you arrange with the bankruptcy court to garnish their earnings until the matter is settled. That's for instance how it worked out with OJ.

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

#377

Post by entiex »

salt-thrower wrote: post #195
commandlinefan wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seem based far less on his actions than on their personal opinion of him. That ought to make everybody nervous.

If you follow the trial at all, you'll see that this was not just "he said a bad thing one time and people are mad at him." He has a strongly demonstrated pattern of lies, perjury, obstruction of the legal process, and encouraging harassment against the Sandy Hook families. Most of the people saying "everyone should be afraid of this" are arguing in bad faith.

but absolutely none of that, save the encouragement of harassment, has any bearing on what the victims suffered from the behavior the lawsuit is fundamentally about. These damages are, supposedly, compensatory, and so the only relevant factor is supposed to be what the victims actually suffered.

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

#379

Post by anigbrowl »

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.

This is uninformed. The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement has cost the tobacco industry north of $200 billion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...

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

#380

Post by Zigurd »

toss1 wrote: post #47
miked85 wrote: post #25

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.

Defense of Alex Jones here, generally in the form of "it was just speech, it was just one falsehood, goodbye free speech, if I say just one wrong thing..." etc. speaks of a particular trait: Context-free pedantry.

These people imagine themselves practicing their context-free pedantry in the workplace and saying something like "Go to Massachusetts for your abortion" or something analogous regarding race, disability, sexual identity, etc. and getting crushed for their speech.

It's not the speech. In Alex Jones's case, the speech led directly to violence against the families of the dead kids. For the people who imagine themselves to be future victims of speech restrictions, it's not their speech, either. It's their lack of understanding that speech has consequences, like an inherent inability to work alongside others who cannot then trust them. What woman in Texas, for example, can trust a man who believes she has no right to control her own body when he could snitch on her?

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