Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 1001 posts

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#521

Post by a12k »

maxlybbert wrote: post #500
a12k wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They typically file in the United States Court for the District of Delaware, a federal court located in Delaware. Delaware law plays a significant part in these cases even though they’re in Fed court. Corporate charters, filings, fiduciary duties, property rights, choice of laws, etc etc etc are all determined by Delaware law and used in the federal court. Federal Bankruptcy Law provides the procedural framework. So,…

This bankruptcy was filed in Texas. How would the corporate charter affect the fairness of how the auction was conducted?

I don’t know in this case specifically. In the typical case though I’ve seen corporate charters enhance fiduciary duties, I’ve seen them specify auction procedures, I’ve seen them give certain classes certain rights, and most importantly for this case I’ve seen them define corporate governance during the auction sale.

So potentially has massive implications for the auction and its fairness.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#522

Post by im3w1l »

pookha wrote: post #306
SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 like…

Chemicals in the water turning the frogs gay is an actual thing though. E.g.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3280221/

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1501065112

https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/

However

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/frogs-rev...

but, > The findings in no way exonerate pollutants like the widely used herbicide atrazine, scientists caution.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#524

Post by Nathanba »

gretch wrote: post #502
Nathanba wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is misrepresentation, they didn't just happen to make a mistake in a complex situation. The crime was to know about the mistake and still not fix it - on purpose. The crime was to know that they should be giving people training on this system for safety reasons but they didn't anyway. Afaik it is an additional misrepresentation that the same system is now continuing on to fly. It is not, they fixed it and patche…

Some of the issues were reported and a decision maker thought "we can get by without this". Pretty much the same reason the Challenger exploded. With a large company, there's gonna be reports about all sorts of stuff all the time, and you have to sort through the noise. They failed to do that here. But is there any shred of doubt that no one, including the greediest most-souless bureaucrat, actually tried to make an…

>But is there any shred of doubt that no one, including the greediest most-souless bureaucrat, actually tried to make an airplane crash and kill people?

This is not taking into account how humans are. People raise their children really badly all the time even though they know what they are doing is bad but they just don't care in the moment. Who wants a bad child? But they still make all the mistakes and end up producing bad children. Incompetence and malice are often nearly identical.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#525

Post by zer8k »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #496
davidw wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"no consequences." This is basically going to be the United States for the immediate future, if you're connected to the right people. Downvote all you want, but we see it with our own eyes.

When has it been otherwise? See also: Hunter Biden.

[flagged]

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#526

Post by timmaxw »

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…

> If someone owes you $1B and they owe me $2B, and they've got an asset worth $500M, I can't just pledge $2B of bad debt to buy the asset. The only fair way is to sell it for $500M in actual cash

No, that's not the _only_ fair way. Suppose the $2B creditor bids $200M in cash and also agrees to forfeit their share of the proceeds from the sale. Then the $1B creditor would receive the entire $200M, which is more than the $167M they would have received from a $500M cash sale. The bid is effectively equivalent to $600M.

Isn't that what happened in the InfoWars case? The bankruptcy judge agreed that the structure of the Onion's bid was valid; he just said the auction would have continued for more rounds.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#527

Post by Eisenstein »

AustinDev wrote: post #504
Eisenstein wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that is the argument that you think it is. If a jury awarded it after seeing all the evidence and the majority of people agree with it, wouldn't that indicate that it is fair? What criteria do you have that overrides the vast majority of people's sense of fairness?

A jury isn't involved in a default judgement afaik

They come up with damages.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#528

Post by ensignavenger »

a12k wrote: post #372
dragonwriter wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Federal Bankruptcy Law provides the procedural framework. Federal bankruptcy law sets the substantive as well as procedural rules for bankruptcy, and its substantive provisions trump any state law, but, OTOH, state law has some role both in determining what the set of claims going in to bankruptcy are and, to the extent permitted in federal bankruptcy law, setting things like allowable personal exemptions, etc.

Yep! This is all correct. The point remains, however, that Delaware law does have a substantial amount to do with bankruptcy proceedings in Delaware, which is really the point I was responding to.

I may have been wrong to say "nothing" but from what I understand Delaware law has very little to do with it and I don't see how it would be relevant to this particular ruling, but I am always open to learning more as I find the topic of law quite interesting.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#529

Post by potato3732842 »

busterarm wrote: post #445
skulk wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very simple. InfoWars did not defend itself in court. Fox news would have. CNN would have. Is it the court's job to defend every defendent? The amount of comments opining here without knowing a smidge of the details of the case is sickening.

That's not true either though. The default judgment was for not complying with the discovery process to the satisfaction of the court. Other options like perjury charges were available to the court, but the court chose the nuclear option to default against Jones. Also in many cases courts will allow you to walk back from the circumstances that ended up with a person in default and to proceed with a fair trial. I even…

>but the court chose the nuclear option to default against Jones.

Institution that is a fundamental part of the establishment and status quo jumps at the chance to shit all over someone who's shtick is undermining public trust in the establishment and status quo. Water is wet. More news at 11.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#530

Post by mrguyorama »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #179
bawolff wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that not fraud?

It is. IIRC he started shuffling assets only after the legal consequences got real. But the legal system is moving slowly. And the victims may get tired of chasing his assets

>But the legal system is moving slowly.

FFS, it's actively working in his favor right now!

Post reply on HN