Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by mdp2021 » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #343

tptacek wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it is. The jury literally just found those damages. These aren't punitive damages, they're compensatory. Punitive damages are the next phase of the case.

I accept that the jury labeled the amount as compensatory damage. But it is obviously the case that that amount of damage was not dealt. Nobody involved had a reputation that was worth $100 million dollars.

> reputation

Very probably the matter is not with reputation. What seems to be more plausible instead is:

-- the victims having had an angry mob risen against them (and of course in the context of having suffered a diremost loss);

-- the responsible having financially exploited the situation.

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

#382

Post by salt-thrower » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

GamerUncle wrote: post #209

salt-thrower wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fair judgement against Jones. A fair judgement against the people who lied about WMD's and killed millions via the war in Iraq would be life in prison, for a start. Just because the criminals at the top get away with war crimes doesn't mean the criminals lower on the totem pole shouldn't be punished. It's a false equivalence to claim otherwise.

That is definitively not the definition of a false equivalence as I did not claim he should go scott free. However I doubt that there is anything fair regarding a 900 millon dollar punishment on a person that has a net worth that is orders of magnitude smaller.

A lifetime of garnished wages seems like a small price to pay for a millionaire who makes a career out of peddling hatred that ruins other peoples' lives. And they didn't just make up the number out of nowhere; it's based on estimated damages that his actions caused. I'm not a lawyer so I can't speak to precedent or similar judgements in other cases. In any case, he will appeal, so we'll see what the final number actually comes out to.

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

#383

Post by kirbys-memeteam » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #260

jfengel wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lies are covered by the first amendment. There is a rather narrow exception for lies that can be proven to have harmed somebody, and you can prove that they knew that they were acting negligently (i.e. knew that it would case harm and knew that it was false). Those are very high bars to meet. Beyond that, you can lie your head off. Jones has been lying for decades. This is the first time that it was so egregious that…

> acting negligently > knew that it was false Wrong. The bar for negligence is "should have performed X, but failed to do so". Ex: A toddler dying by falling off a deck is negligence. The homeowner "should have repaired the deck", but failed to do so. (This bar would lead to negligent homicide or manslaughter, depending on jurisdiction). Similarly, a journalist "should have done basic research", but failed to do so,…

No post body was provided.

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

#384

Post by permo-w » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

chatterhead wrote: post #366

permo-w wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

courts award damages based on ... damages

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

#385

Post by robswc » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #285

robswc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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

Well, I guess there's degrees of lying.

I 100% understand what you're getting at though and I do believe _most_ companies and journalists do practice this... however I've noticed a trend where you'll have a headline or statement that is based on "anonymous sources" or "twitter user says X." Intentionally packing in as much of the claim as possible while minimizing the "source."

One of the most recent examples is from yesterday.

This is the headline VICE News put out yesterday: Elon Musk Spoke to Putin Before Tweeting Ukraine Peace Plan: Report https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake44z/elon-musk-vladimir-pu...

No reasonable person could infer that the entire headline is based off of a claim that has been denied by everyone involved. Musk can weather "negative" headlines like that but I'm more concerned about those that don't have the luxury of shrugging that off.

>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.

I want to believe that... but there's certainly enough examples of people having their reputation completely trashed by the media with the truth only coming out years later. News companies have incentives to get views/clicks. I can't imagine "we messed up" is as attractive as "this person is a monster."

I 100% agree that they should make best effort to correct stories.

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

#386

Post by probably_wrong » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:57 PM UTC

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?

Counterpoint: Alex Jones' life is now valued at minus a billion dollars. So "worthless" would be an inaccurate statement because it should actually be "less than worthless".

But less tongue in cheek, I think Hamuko's comment has the right idea.

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

#387

Post by rglover » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:58 PM UTC

mdp2021 wrote: post #323

Can somebody explain the statement from the lawyer, as reported by Axios: > «We disagree with the basis of the default, we disagree with the court’s evidentiary rulings. In more than 200 trials in the course of my career I have never seen a trial like this», Pattis added. «Today is a very, very dark day for freedom of speech» given that another bullet states > claimed the shooting was a "false flag" operation planned…

It's a statement of opinion which perfectly fits under the guise of free speech.

I can claim that McDonald's hamburgers are made of cat meat to lower prices and it's the exact same thing. It's only because it's political (and Jones is a perennial example to be paraded about as the standard for "evil far-right conservative extremist" thought) that it gets contorted into what it has.

This will predictably bite people in the cheeks later when this case is used as pretense for going after someone those chastising Jones agree with.

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

#388

Post by unknownaccount » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:58 PM UTC

saltminer wrote: post #23

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#389

Post by tptacek » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

pdpi wrote: post #290

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 pu…

No. In the Texas case, Jones lawyers successfully convinced the jury to award relatively low compensatory damages and to hammer him, if that's what they wanted, in the punitive damages phase. In Connecticut, Jones lawyers failed catastrophically to accomplish the same thing. The entire $965MM in this case is compensatory; we haven't reached punitive damages yet. Notably, the torts involved in this case don't appear to have capped damages in Connecticut.

(I have no particular reason to believe this verdict will stand unchanged, but whatever happens to knock the damages down, it will be something very different than what happens in Texas, where state and federal law caps punitive damages in relation to the underlying compensatory damages).

The other obvious difference between this case and Texas is that there are many more plaintiffs here.

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

#390

Post by robotresearcher » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #4

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…

BBC reports that Jones asked live on air for financial donations during the proceedings. He will be bringing money in over this long before paying any out. He's proved himself to be utterly shameless.