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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

#701

Post by logifail »

alwa wrote: post #685
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to say, just as a matter of gut instinct, it sure feels like when the court finds that Alex Jones damaged people—at a value orders of magnitude beyond that of his company—those people should be allowed to decide that, to them, there's value in snuffing out his ill-behaving company altogether. It seems like there's an easy way for them to do that though: Just bid on it themselves and dispose of it however the…

That's what they did, and that's what was rejected here, right? Although it sounds like maybe this was more of a procedural rejection than a dispositive one...

> That's what they did, and that's what was rejected here, right?

Except they weren't the highest bidder?

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#702

Post by dumah »

ipaddr wrote: post #516
ceejayoz wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real brand is Alex's name. It's not like his audience will suddenly not follow him to a new show with a new name. They get to garnish those profits, too.

No bankruptcy resolves the debt. Otherwise there would be no point in a bankruptcy process.

FTX creditors would like to have a word with you.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#703

Post by freejazz »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #323
avs733 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no public auction of InfoWars. That alone is a stain on the whole process. The objective of a bankruptcy court is not to institute some arbitrary meta-ethical standard. It is to deliver maximum cash to the creditors in a fair manner. Again, maximimum value not cash.

I say cash loosely speaking. You at least cannot pledge income from debt that is presently being negotiated down or cancelled. That kind of thing isn't "value" because it's imaginary.

> I say cash loosely speaking

Is this a legal term or something? Not to be rude, but who cares what you mean by it? It's totally besides the point

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#704

Post by cogman10 »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #62
alwa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a little strange, though, that the system notionally decided that the families are owed an enormous amount of economic power as compensation for the nasty behavior of Alex Jones' media company, but at the same time it's obliging them not to use that economic power to prevent the sale of the media company to a "new owner" still affiliated with an unrepentant Alex Jones, who will undoubtedly continue the nasty…

There was no public auction of InfoWars. That alone is a stain on the whole process. The objective of a bankruptcy court is not to institute some arbitrary meta-ethical standard. It is to deliver maximum cash to the creditors in a fair manner. >Is the issue that there are other creditors who are unhappy with this, who would get paid before the aggrieved families' damages would? The lawyers seem to be fine with it, as…

> There was no public auction of InfoWars

The auction was indeed very public. The bids were not.

The only requirement to participate was you had to show the Trustee that you were serious and had the means to participate. Only 2 parties did that.

The auction dates were published in newspapers and various news outlets announced that it was going to happen.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#705

Post by AnthonyMouse »

freejazz wrote: post #681
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the bids are secret and the highest bidder pays what they bid then bidders have the incentive to try to bid strategically, i.e. less than what they'd be willing to pay as long as they think that's more than anyone else would be willing to pay. Plus, if there is someone who thinks it's worth way more than anyone else, they could just place a modest bid and then if they lose buy it from the winner for $1 more than w…

Yeah but in the bankruptcy setting, this would demonstrate that the trustee didn't get as much as they could.

Does it? If it's public knowledge that Alice would pay $200 and Bob would pay $100 then Alice wouldn't actually bid $200, she'd bid $101 and still win, the same result as that type of auction. If nobody knows what Alice would bid except Alice then it's even worse, because Bob thinks he could win at $60 and would rather pay $60 than $100 and Alice correctly predicts that Bob is going to do that and then wins by bidding $75. And if Bob bids $80 then Alice can still buy it from Bob for $110 but the estate is still getting $80 instead of $101.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#706

Post by vizzier »

acdha wrote: post #673
vizzier wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but Fox Settled the dominion lawsuit for $725M [1]. So this type of harassment means big judgments against you. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems_v._Fox...

How was that harassment? They directed a baseless smear campaign which posed a significant risk to Dominion’s business. Unless we’re defining “harassment” as “accountability”, that seems fair.

You're right, harassment might not be the right term when applied to a corporate entity. Either way these were both defamation suits.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#707

Post by shkkmo »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #323
avs733 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no public auction of InfoWars. That alone is a stain on the whole process. The objective of a bankruptcy court is not to institute some arbitrary meta-ethical standard. It is to deliver maximum cash to the creditors in a fair manner. Again, maximimum value not cash.

I say cash loosely speaking. You at least cannot pledge income from debt that is presently being negotiated down or cancelled. That kind of thing isn't "value" because it's imaginary.

This is completely false.

Debt can absolutely be sold for whatever it is worth. In this case, the Jones' debt owned by the Sandy Hook families is fairly valuable to Jones' other debtors because it means they get a bigger slice of the bankruptcy estate. Thus the Sandy Hook families can offer enough of their Jones' debt in the sale to make it more valuable. (Edit: more complicated than how I explained it because both sets of debtors include Sandy Hook families)

This isn't any more "imaginary" than money itself.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#708

Post by ceejayoz »

StefanBatory wrote: post #401
fennecfoxy wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah it's just typical rich people getting away with everything stuff & we'll continue to let it happen because we are hapless.

It does really appear that America's getting her own, homegrown oligarchs.

Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller... we've had them.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#709

Post by throw16180339 »

crazygringo wrote: post #637
baggachipz wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when has that mattered? He'll get a pardon in 1 month anyway.

Only federal crimes can be pardoned by the president. Everything here is state-level. The next president can't touch any of it.

I wouldn't bet on this. Trump can use a punitive executive order to pressure the state until the governor pardons Alex Jones.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#710

Post by doctoboggan »

NoGravitas wrote: post #645
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.

This is the legal pretext, which appears about 2/3 of the way through 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.

Shouldn't all of the mechanics of the auction been agreed upon explicitly or at least implicitly with past precedent of bankruptcy auctions? How did the lawyers go ahead of an auction that even had a chance of being thrown out by the judge?
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