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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

#611

Post by dukeofdoom »

warbeforepeace wrote: post #536
lovich wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He probably could have made such an argument or a similar one on his defense but he received a default judgement because he continuously refused to show up to court dates for his case and perjured himself repeatedly. If this was a soccer game he basically walked to the edge of the field and sat there the whole game and then complained that the refs were in a conspiracy against him because the opposing team was able t…

He received a default judgment because he failed to provide discovery items including financial documents to show the company value, videos that included sandy hook, text and emails that included sandy hook, how much it made of sandy hook and failed to provide a competent corporate representative that could answer questions on a list of items that was provided in advance.

If failing to provide evidence to the prosecution is how you lose a trial. Than forever more all the prosecution has to to do prove your guilt is to ask for something you don't have. They were asking for things like his Youtube Analytics after Youtube deleted his channel. This was one of those things he was defaulted for. It's quite possible he did not have them backed up, and no evidence that he even viewed them. His monetary success was only relevant to his fine should he be found guilty. Yet this was used to find guilt.

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

#612

Post by threatofrain »

Georgelemental wrote: post #545
HyperSane wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't independent actors because they were highly impressionable people whose actions were influenced by Jone's lies.

Ah yes, we should let the government decide that some people are "highly impressionable" and therefore not human beings with agency or rights. That's definitely not a terrifying precedent to set, nothing to see here

If I tell you to harass families and you go ahead and do so, both you and I ought face legal risk. And that's what's happening here. As this is an entirely private tort between private individuals, it is up to the individuals involved to decide which of the many responsible parties they wish to sue.

As it happens, Alex Jones is also enjoying his prerogative to sue others for defamation. And it's going to come down to a jury that decides whether those being sued by Alex Jones are liable for his stated damages.

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

#613

Post by dukeofdoom »

ncallaway wrote: post #465
wara23arish wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did he really say go harass these people or did he just say they’re crisis actors and its hoax? Im genuinely asking because i don’t understand how this works. I was under the impression that saying “Trump is a murderous liar” is fine, if I say “Go kill trump”etc then thats incitement. Does that make sense?

Incitement is not defamation. He was not sued for "incitement", he was sued for defamation. To prove defamation, you need to prove that someone lied about you, and that those lies caused material harms. You saying "Trump is a murderous liar" is largely fine because: - A reasonable reader, familiar with the context of the place you are writing, would understand that you aren't making a factual claim that Trump murdere…

Doesn't "you" imply that "you" were actually named. If a politician says the unvaccinated are terrible people for spreading the disease. Then it's proved that the vaccine did not stop transmission. Do they owe billions to these people.

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

#614

Post by thwayunion »

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?

> I can't figure the math on how any of them could have been damaged $64 million.

You're massively underestimating both the impact of Jones's behavior and the value of a lifetime of earnings for many two earner families.

Assume both parents were the equivalent of senior SWEs at google and now cannot work. The assumption that they can no longer work is not an unreasonable assumption; their children were slaughtered and then they were threatened by angry mobs for years (and still are). I wouldn't be able to hold down a job.

$64M * 2% = $1,300,000 per year safe withdrawal. (The 4% rule is good if you are retired, but 2% is more realistic if you're eg in your early 30s.)

$1,300,000 / 2 = $640,000 income per earner.

Subtract $20,000 per person to compensate for typical healthcare and retirement benefits [1]. Actually that's a lower bound because of tax implications. We're now at $620,000 per earner.

I'm actually surprised that there aren't at least a few families for whom the number is higher; eg two surgeons, a surgeon and a lawfirm partner, a principal engineer and a VP, etc. would all have lost far more than $640K/yr/earner. These aren't typical pairings, but they're also not particularly rare, and the Sandy Hook community's family median income is nearly 2x the national average so it's the type of place you might expect to find these sorts of people over-represented.

So anyways, we are already within the Senior FAANG salary range and haven't even considered the various serious damages caused by Jones's behavior, beyond his victims' inability to hold down fairly normal upper middle class jobs. Many of them had to move multiple times, probably now have serious and life-long mental health issues from the harassment piles on top of trauma, etc. Once you include those damages, you probably end up with that $64M principal translating to something that is not far from the median family income for Sandy Hook.

[1] eg, https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/benefits

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

#615

Post by int_19h »

aschearer wrote: post #532
tptacek wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(a) Stuff like this is supremely unhelpful and corrosive to the thread. (b) It's obviously not the case that Jones is getting a sympathetic hearing from this thread; instead, you're noticing mostly the randos posting pro-Jones stuff that lives briefly before being flagged to the bottom of the site.

In this thread there are many non-new accounts taking positions such as: - This infringes on the first amendment - He shouldn't be punished solely for his speech - What about this or that person who did X - The punishment is too much - Anyway, he'll never pay so it doesn't really matter All these strike me as being sympathetic to Jones. Why even post such things if not to elicit sympathy or muddy waters? Meanwhile yo…

These are all valid points that you may strongly disagree with, but at least recognize that they don't require being sympathetic to Jones. E.g. the first two are just a very extreme position on the general freedom-of-speech scale, which some people hold for purely ideological reasons. Similarly, the third and the fourth are also a matter of justice and fairness in the abstract - that the punishment ought to be the same for the same crime. And so on.

Indeed, I would say that most commenters on this story that take one or more of those positions explicitly state that they're doing so as a matter of principle. Which, given the prevailing attitudes hereabouts on topics such as freedom of speech, is quite believable - so why are you assuming some other sinister motivation?

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

#616

Post by int_19h »

dredmorbius wrote: post #565
saltminer wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> suppressing free speech is acceptable in this instance Libel, slander, and defamation are not free speech. You do not have the right to repeatedly, knowingly, lie about someone else, especially when said lies ruin peoples' lives. > billion dollar fine for some off-hand nutso claim It wasn't a claim, he asserted it as fact, and it wasn't just once, he did this up until he got sued, and even made up conspiracies abou…

I would take a different tack on this: the speech was legally unhindered, that is, free. The consequences of the speech are, however, borne by the speaker. I'm not sure this covers all cases of consequential burdening, but it does seem to cover many of them. A future prohibition on speech, gag order, banning from online or broadcast services, etc., might be a harder case to make, though these could still be seen as s…

> I would take a different tack on this: the speech was legally unhindered, that is, free. The consequences of the speech are, however, borne by the speaker.

If you do redefine freedom of speech thus, then what place in the world doesn't have it? Even in North Korea you can speak freely for a short while before you have to bear the consequences.

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

#617

Post by zaebal »

tptacek wrote: post #405
loceng wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did he cause his fans to harass families? Did he specifically brigade families or tell people to go after them?

Remarkably: yes, that seems to have been the case.

Do you have any credible source on that? That he actually instructed his followers to go and harass the families?

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

#618

Post by int_19h »

budder wrote: post #76
alkonaut wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there ever was such a country, would people want to live there? And if they wouldn’t, doesn’t that just mean it would change? I can’t see how some form of free speech absolutism would even function. As for the size of the damages: in the US, weirdly, rich people pay more damages because I assume it’s also a way of making them stop committing the crime and not simply compensation for damage done.

Yes, I think people should be able to tweet things like “masks do/don’t” work without being able to be sued. It’s the same thing with covid. It was made illegal to question it

You can tweet "I believe that ..." all you like and not get sued.

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

#619

Post by dukeofdoom »

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…

This is terrible news for free speech. But maybe great news for the unvaccinated who will be able to go after all the people that spread lies about them, and ostracize them from society for two years.

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

#620

Post by int_19h »

advisedwang wrote: post #401
TigeriusKirk wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am explicitly not siding with Alex Jones in any way.

You think he should be fined less. That is siding with him in result.

They're saying that the compensation for damage ought to be less. This doesn't say anything about punitive damages, however.
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