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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

#471

Post by dragontamer »

tptacek wrote: post #460
dragontamer wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your clarifications. > (2) If we're talking about the "actual malice" standard, then the standard is recklessness, not negligence. My understanding is that "actual malice" only applies to public figures. Not private figures? EDIT: I should note that I'm working off of roughly high-school journalism + high school law levels of analysis here. I recognize I'm no expert in this subject, but we were forced to s…

Jones lawyers attempted to claim that the Sandy Hook parents were in fact public figures (again, this is all mooted by Jones eventual default of the defamation cases themselves; the conduct standards we're talking about apply pretty much entirely to the question of whether you're culpable in the first place, not what the damages are.)

Gotcha.

I haven't followed the full details of this case specifically. And it seems like there's multiple different cases of defamation vs Alex Jones for Sandy Hook... and my own memories could be getting mixed up between them.

Good to discuss these various details in any case. Reckless vs negligence (and other such details) are very important to understand the case.

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

#472

Post by ncallaway »

maest wrote: post #293

One surprising thing (at least for me) that I don't see anyone talking about in the comments is: I had no idea Alex Jones had that much money. That's 1 billion dollars in damages.

Damages are not about how much money you have. It's about how much damage you've caused.

It would not be hard for me to go out into the world and cause more damage that I can afford to repay.

I don't think Alex Jones has that much money.

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

#473

Post by ChicagoDave »

voisin wrote: post #403
polotics wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn’t that what it will amount to? He’ll declare bankruptcy and everything he’s got will go to settling some fraction of these lawsuits.

Bankruptcy doesn't allow you to hide money. The families are added to the list of creditors seeking relief and the judge will order them accordingly. The families are likely to be the top creditor and will get every penny from his estate.

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

#474

Post by chris_wot »

unknownaccount wrote: post #388
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

The guy claimed they were all crisis actors.

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

#475

Post by pen2l »

tptacek wrote: post #299
ggm wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tightene…

(Pedantic nitpicking) You mean anti-SLAPP laws.

For others' curiosity: A SLAPP is Strategic lawsuit against public participation, a strategy for plaintiffs to silence opponents by way of burdening them with an onslaught of lawsuits and hoping they are scared away by potential legal costs of mounting a defense thereby resulting in them just giving up. The potential for this strategy to have chilling effects gave rise to anti-SLAPP laws.

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

#476

Post by ncallaway »

betwixthewires wrote: post #433

I'm not a fan of the guy, I think he's a two bit boner pill salesman, but I find it interesting, this is much higher than most SEC, FTC and FCC fines of big multinationals. Even bigger ones, like Purdue pharma, paid over 5 billion, but killed and addicted hundreds of thousands to a few million people, I'd argue that's more than 5x worse than this. Seems the government likes to be soft on their buddies and excessively…

This wasn't an action brought by the government. He wasn't sued by the SEC, the FTC, or the FCC. He was sued by the parents that he defamed repeatedly over years.

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

#477

Post by ncallaway »

swordfish69 wrote: post #258
Pxtl wrote: post #213

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.

Please be specific what public records requests you've done, and how they demonstrated that this whole event stinks to high heaven.

What records have you reviewed?

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

#478

Post by dekhn »

jfengel wrote: post #212
dragontamer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You couldn't lie in the 1970s or 1980s. If you did, you would be sued for libel or slander (depending on how exactly you lied). In the 90s, 00s, and 10s, we somehow forgot about libel / slander laws. I'm happy to see that something as egregious as Alex's Jones's lies here are finally getting punished, but I'd like to see more protection from libel/slander in modern 2020s era America. ------ Lies, traditionally speaki…

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…

The only thing worse than Godwin's Law on the internet is discussions of the first amendment. I've seen the exact same arguments and misunderstandings repeatedly.

It's a highly subtle right that does not mean what most people think it means. Trying to apply it in this case won't bring any value to your argument.

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

#479

Post by voisin »

ChicagoDave wrote: post #473
voisin wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that what it will amount to? He’ll declare bankruptcy and everything he’s got will go to settling some fraction of these lawsuits.

Bankruptcy doesn't allow you to hide money. The families are added to the list of creditors seeking relief and the judge will order them accordingly. The families are likely to be the top creditor and will get every penny from his estate.

I’m not suggesting he can hide money. He gives up everything he has of bankruptcy date, and then starts fresh with a new company and the same followers and same advertisers paying him to lead those followers.

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

#480

Post by sgent »

rglover wrote: post #387
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 i…

See Taco Bell suing for defamation about the makeup of their taco meat. You might get away with a claim about McDonald's burgers that is wrong, it would only be because you were to small to notice.
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