Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

Post by johnecheck » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 6:58 PM UTC

sophacles wrote: post #357

impossiblefork wrote: post #249

I really don't understand how a judgement this large can be reasonable in a case where nobody has had his house burned down. A billion dollars is ten billion crowns, that's 10 000 million crowns, or around 5 000 apartments. I don't understand how 5 000 apartments can be a judgement handed out to an individual over something he says. It doesn't really matter what he says, when it's this kind of huge amounts. One can't…

Because damages are easy to calculate - how much money did Jones make from intentionally lying about the victim? That money is the result of him selling their repuation without their consent - the market decided what the value of that act was.

Post by rtkwe » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 6:59 PM UTC

dukeofdoom wrote: post #626

rtkwe wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Showing up isn't what he got in trouble and received a default judgement for was was not complying with discovery. He was required to produce certain things like messages about certain topics and financial records. For some topics they returned no records and later when the full phone record was sent by mistake there were texts with the keywords from the discovery request. Some documents they simply refused to produc…

This is like getting accused of murder, and the judge finding you guilty because you didn't produce knife during discovery, the prosecution said you had. Just absurd. Then skipping ahead to the sentencing, and the judge telling your lawyers that if you testify you're not guilty to the jury, he'll find you and your lawyers in contempt (jail-able offence). While lining up a long list of crying victims to tell the jury…

Post by Eisenstein » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 7:00 PM UTC

hajile wrote: post #628

Eisenstein wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who saw all the information and heard from the parties involved made that decision. You are saying they are wrong based on a feeling.

It was a default judgement. No trial took place and there was no ability for the jury to see evidence from both sides. The monetary amount was absolutely based on feelings.

Post by vizzier » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 7:02 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #237

roenxi wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that is terrible, I don't know if you can argue it is terrible to the tune of what they've done to Jones. Every major media outlet has some instances of, effectively, targeted harassment in their history. Whether the public endorses that harassment is more a question of how effective the reporters are than anything else. It makes sense that Jones would lose the case, but the scale of the judgements was eye wate…

> Every major media outlet has some instances of, effectively, targeted harassment in their history. Whether the public endorses that harassment is more a question of how effective the reporters are than anything else. Do you have any examples supporting the equivalence you’re claiming? The high judgements were caused by his defiance of earlier judgements so that pattern is really what we’re looking for.

Post by nativeit » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 7:09 PM UTC

gms7777 wrote: post #643

thorum wrote: post #638

Am I missing something or does this NYT article not actually say what the judge based his decision on? That would be an important piece of information to have when deciding whether the decision was good or not.

From the article: "Judge Lopez said that the bankruptcy auction failed to maximize the amount of money that the sale of Infowars should provide to Mr. Jones’s creditors, including the Sandy Hook families, in part because the bids were submitted in secret. “It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,” Judge Lopez said. “Nobody knows what anybody else is bidding,” he added."