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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

#551

Post by betwixthewires »

ncallaway wrote: post #476
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.

That makes it even worse. Defraud or harm the entire country and you pay less than defaming a handful of people. He deserves to pay them for causing them trouble for his own gain, but if this isn't a political example I don't know what is.

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

#552

Post by tptacek »

donatj wrote: post #547
tptacek wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By making millions of dollars by deliberately amplifying the pain of a murdered parent, so that they're harassed and threatened, face to face, even when they visit states across the country from where they live. It's not complicated. Jones really did fuck these people's lives up, and he did so knowing that their lives had already been devastated. It's hard to even think of a way to profit from the mass murder of firs…

His profit isn't "actual damages" though. They haven't even decided punitive damages yet. I can't figure the math on how any of them could have been damaged $64 million. The US government values a human life at $10 million, is this 6x worse than what the killer did?

Contrary to popular opinion, there is not in fact a $10,000,000 cap on wrongful death damages. Plaintiffs semi-routinely get multiples of that.

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

#553

Post by danielmarkbruce »

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.

Are punitive damages not allowed in libel cases?

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

#554

Post by _-david-_ »

tptacek wrote: post #276
guywithahat wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest numbers I've seen were 8 figures (Rolling Stones published something suggesting 160 million over 3 years, while he was still on YouTube at his peak, which is 53 million a year), and that was for total revenue which to my understanding is debated as being too high. Jones himself is probably worth less than 10 million especially considering his share of InfoWars is now worthless

That seems unlikely, since Jones own bankruptcy filings show withdrawals from FSS in the high 8 figures.

Is that revenue or profit though? Withdrawing a lot of money doesn't mean anything if it is being spent on product and other costs.

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

#555

Post by tptacek »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #553
thaumasiotes wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Are punitive damages not allowed in libel cases?

They are, they're just usually handled in a separate phase. In CT, judges apparently work them out after a jury recommends that punitive damages get handed out; in TX, the jury deliberates twice, once for compensatory and once for punitive damages.

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

#556

Post by Kesseki »

pen2l wrote: post #522
Kesseki wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there is usually a floor value. Most states enumerate some types and amounts of property, and some amounts of income, that are exempt from civil judgment collection. It's the same thing for bankruptcy: there are exemptions that allow you to keep a certain amount. A bankruptcy discharge does usually ensure a clean slate for new ventures. However, some types of debt are "nondischargeable" and can survive a bankrup…

I think if I was in law school and I was being told about these defamation laws and the potential for someone to be sued out of virtually their entire wealth, that would not have sat well with me. But here we are, and Alex Jones' antics prove to be an excellent rejoinder to those doubts. Still however, I wish the laws were more selective about which funds are ripe for being taken from. E.g., Alex Jones should have to…

That's an interesting point about the disincentive. I fear, though, that rules around this wouldn't be feasible to administer; it could open a whole new world of hiding assets, which is already pretty easy to do.

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

#557

Post by anigbrowl »

tptacek wrote: post #496
anigbrowl wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly not against restoration of the code duello .

That's an extremely Jones-adjacent opinion to have.

Feel free to support that claim in some way.

Most of Jones' opinions seem to revolve around the idea that cabals of conspirators are trying to trick people into accepting exploitation or tyranny. I don't keep up with all his different ideas, though.

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

#558

Post by dragonwriter »

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.

> He’ll declare bankruptcy

Sure, but debts from frauds and willful and malicious harms, includong associated punitive damages, are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

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

#559

Post by mikkergp »

wyager wrote: post #71
sterlind wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jones stated that the Sandy Hook victims were crisis actors. he knew that to be false. it was an egregious case of defamation. knowingly spreading lies that damage someone's reputation is called slander, and it's not protected by the first amendment. neither is shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, or committing perjury, or falsifying your income taxes.

You're making up a narrative for why suppressing free speech is acceptable in this instance, not discharging the notion that free speech was, in fact, suppressed. The fact that a conspiracy talk radio guy can get hit with a billion dollar fine for some off-hand nutso claim (that he subsequently recanted!) is a very unpromising barometer for the health of free speech in our country.

I’m trying to find a source but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t an off-hand nurse claim, he talked about it for years.

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

#560

Post by tptacek »

yucky wrote: post #535
Jordrok wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only a good point if you think that the fines that the banking executives paid in 2008 were sufficient. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone express that opinion. The fine here is fully justified. The lack of fines in 2008 is the problem, not this.

>The fine here is fully justified. A billion dollar fine is justified because idiots read his blog and decided a baseless conspiracy theory seemed plausible? That's laughable. I didn't think I'd ever find myself on the same side of something as Alex Jones and yet here I am. These people lost their minds.

That's literally how tort damages work. The inverse of your logic would imply that defamation wouldn't be actionable at all; reputation damage, after all, concerns entirely what unrelated third parties do with your misstatements.
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