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Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

nytimes.com

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Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#301

Post by JackFr »

trollbridge wrote: post #216
amalcon wrote: post #170

I am just some guy who doesn't actually know much about this. This being the internet, though: If I understand, it's pretty routine in real estate foreclosures for a creditor to win the auction simply by bidding the outstanding value of the debt. Thus not needing to actually come up with much or any cash. This gains the ability to use or resell the property however you want. How is one situation different from the ot…

Bankruptcy runs by different rules than foreclosures (which is why people about to be foreclosed on often file bankruptcy). Specifically, junior creditors are protected, and everyone gets a proportionate share of the proceeds. In a foreclosure, the senior lienholder usually gets the property and the junior lienholders either get nothing or get what’s left over after the senior creditor gets whatever they were owed. I…

Bankruptcy is something that happens to the borrower. Foreclosure is something that happens to the property.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#302

Post by ensignavenger »

a12k wrote: post #230
ajb wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what this judgement says. It actually says the sale did not generate enough money for the creditors and the process should be run again. I think the Judge maybe naive in thinking that re-running an auction will generate more money (normally it will generate less, as the losing bidders will drop out) but he did not agree with Jones' claims.

The creditors agreed to and supported the Global Tetrahedron plan to purchase Infowars and settle the bankruptcy. Seems like the judge is overstepping given Delaware law on this matter.

Bankruptcy law is federal law, Delaware law has nothing to do with it.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#303

Post by munk-a »

rfw300 wrote: post #14
acomjean wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selling to a business involved with the individual that lost in court.. It seems like a Fraudulent Conveyance to my non lawyer self (but I could be wrong) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraudulent_conveyance

It's not a good outcome, but it's also not fraudulent conveyance. Principally because the proceeds of the sale go to the victims.

The proceeds of the sale will not come close to the value of the judgement - and Jones has acted extremely dishonestly through the process and repeatedly tried to move value from his company to his parents and other affiliate companies. I don't believe it's a fraudulent conveyance but there's a lot of awful happening here.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#304

Post by gklitz »

logicchains wrote: post #191
ethbr1 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mere defamation I think what Alex Jones did is more than mere defamation. Repeatedly lying about the reality of a school mass shooting, over years, in such a way that he caused threats to be made against the families of victims? Incitement to credible threats of violence, and especially continuing to do so even after you're aware that's what your listeners are doing, deserves severe consequences.

>Incitement to credible threats of violence Incitement means means explicitly encouraging. Just because someone people made threats of violence to the families because they believed what Alex Jones said about the shootings, doesn't mean that saying "The shootings were faked" is incitement. If Jones had explicitly said "the families deserve to suffer violent consequences for helping fake the shootings", that would be…

> Incitement means means explicitly encouraging.

He was literally, as in literally, comparing the families of the victims to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

I don’t know about you, but if someone has been screaming at me for years that I need to be ready for armed conflict with “the enemy” and then points to someone screaming “that guy’s Hitler”, I would definitely take that as explicit encouragement. But obviously it’s all “just comedy” right?

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#305

Post by impossiblefork »

PessimalDecimal wrote: post #282
impossiblefork wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a billion dollars. The order of magnitude isn't 'immense stress to an individual', it's on the order of burning down tens or hundreds of houses.

Right the problem here is the targeted, selective enforcement -- really, overenforcement -- of laws. Nobody would argue that people hit with $100 million judgments for copyright violations while torrenting music actually had copyright on that music. They didn't. But the point of the eye watering judgments was to send a message. Same here.

>Nobody would argue that people hit with $100 million judgments for copyright violations while torrenting music actually had copyright on that music

I don't understand the above, but they've actually made this judgement, and it's much too large. A firm worth as little as 30 million can be an incredible innovative company, supported by a government and serious effort, and here we have people just handing out a 1 billion dollar fine over something where nothing even close to that value has been destroyed.

It's as I said in my initial comment, the value of a whole town.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#306

Post by pookha »

SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #201
logicchains wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>money for Jones which he will use with even less restraint since he knows there are no consequences He was fined over a billion dollars, in what world is losing a billion dollars no consequences?

He was fined a billion dollars, but it will never be collected, he never lost a billion dollars. With this decision all his debts are pardoned and he gets to keep his megaphone, that is very "no consequences".

America was founded with a constitution that guarantee's citizens a megaphone as part of a list of inalienable rights (God given per words in the constitution). Bankrupting Jones won't remove his ability speak or muzzle him and it's more than likely only going to give him more of an audience. He'll still be able to voice his performance art about growing babies-in-cows-for-25-years and gay-frogs. He'll more than likely struggle to sell his seeds and end-of-times nonsense and he's probably been debanked. But megaphone wise he'll be louder than ever.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#307

Post by JumpCrisscross »

munk-a wrote: post #268
goodluckchuck wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what the internet says, it didn’t go to the highest bidder.

It's complicated - it went to the bidder that would result in the two largest debtors being the happiest with the outcome but that bidder didn't bid the most money in a regular manner. The structure of the bid was quite complex but essentially the largest debtor agreed to enlarge the share the second largest debtor would receive by supplementing it from their own share due to the awards in the two court cases being s…

> went to the bidder that would result in the two largest debtors being the happiest with the outcome but that bidder didn't bid the most money in a regular manner

The creditors own the asset. If every dollar the creditors are owed voted, which bid would they choose?

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#308

Post by amyames »

munk-a wrote: post #268
goodluckchuck wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what the internet says, it didn’t go to the highest bidder.

It's complicated - it went to the bidder that would result in the two largest debtors being the happiest with the outcome but that bidder didn't bid the most money in a regular manner. The structure of the bid was quite complex but essentially the largest debtor agreed to enlarge the share the second largest debtor would receive by supplementing it from their own share due to the awards in the two court cases being s…

Just navel gazing here maybe there is case precedent or law here.

The debtor generally deserves their case to be discharged resolved liquidated closed and done forever.

Paying ongoing reparations in royalties or whatever the onion proposes doesn’t accomplish this. Alex Jones himself could convert his case to a chapter 13 and set up a “repayment” plan based on his own anticipated/potential earnings from his own business. It would possibly even be higher, infowars intended audience is probably more profitable than people laughing at infowars on Ben Collins bluesky feed.

The people who got a personal judgment aren’t made whole by a promise of future restitution by someone purchasing his business assets.

What if the onion went bankrupt next year and said oh we’re not going to pay that anymore?

That would be an interesting case to test: a person being relieved from a fraud or criminal tort, as it’s handed off to a third party buying their business, who themselves didn’t commit fraud or a criminal tort and merely became insolvent which is dischargeable.

In the case where the “creditors” own the asset to settle their claim, that’s another story, whether they make $1 or a billion dollars disposing of it is no longer the debtors problem

In the same way that returning my smashed up uninsured car to a secured lender doesn’t make them whole for my discharged loan either.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#309

Post by adolph »

munk-a wrote: post #268
goodluckchuck wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what the internet says, it didn’t go to the highest bidder.

It's complicated - it went to the bidder that would result in the two largest debtors being the happiest with the outcome but that bidder didn't bid the most money in a regular manner. The structure of the bid was quite complex but essentially the largest debtor agreed to enlarge the share the second largest debtor would receive by supplementing it from their own share due to the awards in the two court cases being s…

That’s a lot of text to say “yes, it didn’t go to the highest bidder.“

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#310

Post by munk-a »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #72
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Onion didn't have the cash. Correct, it was given up by the majority creditors in exchange for non-monetary considerations (specifically, the moral victory of having The Onion own Infowars). > It was basically an IOU from one of the families This is fine, people are allowed to act against their own financial interests. That's one thing that having ownership means is that you can ruin the thing you own for any o…

>This is fine, people are allowed to act against their own financial interests. That's one thing that having ownership means is that you can ruin the thing you own for any or no reason. The court has zero reason to intervene if a majority creditor is giving up their own share of the proceeds for any or no reason. You're oversimplifying this. If someone owes you $1B and they owe me $2B, and they've got an asset worth…

> Isn't it telling that the same judge said it was done improperly? Trustees have an obligation to follow standard practices which maximize cash flow or at least don't give the appearance of impropriety.

This is incorrect - trustees have an obligation to maximize the benefit to debtors. You'll see common examples of non-monetary benefit when it comes to wills - a cabinet that may be valued at 150$ but has immense sentimental value may be given to inheritors even if there is a 200k bid on it if that is what the beneficiaries all agree to.

You are treating debt discharging too literally like a numbers game - there are other important factors and in this case all the debtors were aligned and would have clearly preferred the deal with the lower monetary value.

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