Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim • Hacker News Board

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#131

Post by FireBeyond » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 12:39 AM UTC

hunterb123 wrote: post #117

maximilianburke wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a leak if the lawyers fuck up. The plaintiffs asked the defendents if they wanted to claim privilege on the contents and the defendents refused, the ball is in play.

First off, his "fuck up" was leaking it, second it's still protected under attorney client privilege if AJ didn't authorize it. Your attorney can't just leak (on purpose or accident) information you gave them and it be used against you. Just because you don't like X person don't allow the government to step on everyone's inalienable rights. If you went to trial for a traffic violation and your lawyer accidentally for…

> First off, his "fuck up" was leaking it

That may have been a fuck up, in that he didn't intend to do so. But it was still information plaintiffs were entitled to.

> second it's still protected under attorney client privilege if AJ didn't authorize it

This is wrong. The vast majority of that information was discoverable and should have been discovered beforehand, but Jones withheld it. You can't refuse to "authorize" the release of discoverable information, which is probably why his lawyer didn't (initially) try to claim privilege.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#132

Post by gpm » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 12:40 AM UTC

hunterb123 wrote: post #117

maximilianburke wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a leak if the lawyers fuck up. The plaintiffs asked the defendents if they wanted to claim privilege on the contents and the defendents refused, the ball is in play.

First off, his "fuck up" was leaking it, second it's still protected under attorney client privilege if AJ didn't authorize it. Your attorney can't just leak (on purpose or accident) information you gave them and it be used against you. Just because you don't like X person don't allow the government to step on everyone's inalienable rights. If you went to trial for a traffic violation and your lawyer accidentally for…

The law is explicit in this case that the attorney client privilege is waived by the attorney not asserting it within 10 days, and the judge has already explicitly oked sending it to the j6 committee, and the judge has already only very slightly less explicitly oked sending it to whoever else the plaintiffs attorney feels like (with the exception of some medical information).

Is that law unconstitutional with respect to letting attorneys waive attorney client privilege? I have no clue. In practice it doesn't matter, the cat is out of the bag already and no one has even begun to advance such an argument to the court.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#133

Post by gerdesj » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 12:40 AM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #103

gerdesj wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm a supporter of Jones being able to spread whatever insane theories" I think you are a supporter of freedom of speech in general - that's something I thoroughly approve of too. I also think you are able to understand the difference between seeing a horrendous crime and seeing that crime and attempting to profit from it. That seems to be what this bloke did: He tried to change and engorge the narrative regarding t…

>> He tried to convince the world that the crime didn't actually happen and even worse tried to convince the world that the dead were actors and other nonsense. I'm a Jewish grandson of Holocaust survivors. I'm also American. I'm pretty happy our country has not adopted laws against holocaust denial in the way Germany or Canada have. I appreciate the thought behind those laws. But I appreciate freedom of speech more.…

"I'm a Jewish grandson of Holocaust survivors. I'm also American."

Fair enough. My Jewish roots (int al) are rather more convoluted than yours.

"I'm pretty happy our country has not adopted laws against holocaust denial in the way Germany or Canada have."

Both of my parents were soldiers and I grew up in West Germany and the UK in the 1970s-1990s (on and off, here and there!)

Tort is to do with contract law.

Be American as much as you can - and I will stand in your corner for that too. However there is some history here and Jones was riffing and profiteering on an event that was nominally genocide and he described it as such.

Please don't mistake free speech for hate and spite.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#134

Post by somewhat_drunk » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 12:40 AM UTC

Fezzik wrote: post #77

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t tell if he’s a psychopath or mentally ill. Maybe whoever put the guy on air seems responsible on some level as well. We love to point the finger at this guy but a lot of people were responsible for many, many insane productions by him, and no one questioned if it should be aired long enough to realize this would be harmful to the victims’ families.

My armchair assessment is he loves money and he found a herd of morons that is willing to throw millions at him if he behaves like a maniac and says outlandish things. He basically performs like any religious huckster, knowingly feeding people lies for dollar bills. Here he is on JRE walking back his Sandy-Hook-being-fake-claims and he presents as a perfectly reasonable, informed dude: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q…

Your armchair assessment is quite obviously spot-on. I hope the forthcoming lawsuits fine him into oblivion.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#135

Post by ggm » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 12:40 AM UTC

busyant wrote: post #126

noduerme wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> He tried to convince the world that the crime didn't actually happen and even worse tried to convince the world that the dead were actors and other nonsense. I'm a Jewish grandson of Holocaust survivors. I'm also American. I'm pretty happy our country has not adopted laws against holocaust denial in the way Germany or Canada have. I appreciate the thought behind those laws. But I appreciate freedom of speech more.…

i hope you're correct, but i suspect that swiss bank accounts, shell corporations, clever accountants and "gifting" money to friends and family will say otherwise.

Those Swiss bankers are equally indiscriminate. They allowed a minority of wealthy refugees to hide value and allowed Nazism to hide expropriated goods and money, stolen from those self same wealthy refugee's less savvy compatriots, and continue to hide this wealth alongside the more quotidian tax avoiders and druglords and arms dealers.

What I find fascinating is that even after panama papers the banking system is reluctant to really tackle the problem. We learn more from whistle-blower and (possibly law breaching) seizure of strong boxes, than we do from Swiss banks voluntarily. They really only love money. Social justice is nothing.

Swiss neutrality is an enabler of bad things, in finance.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#136

Post by bandyaboot » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 12:41 AM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #103

gerdesj wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm a supporter of Jones being able to spread whatever insane theories" I think you are a supporter of freedom of speech in general - that's something I thoroughly approve of too. I also think you are able to understand the difference between seeing a horrendous crime and seeing that crime and attempting to profit from it. That seems to be what this bloke did: He tried to change and engorge the narrative regarding t…

>> He tried to convince the world that the crime didn't actually happen and even worse tried to convince the world that the dead were actors and other nonsense. I'm a Jewish grandson of Holocaust survivors. I'm also American. I'm pretty happy our country has not adopted laws against holocaust denial in the way Germany or Canada have. I appreciate the thought behind those laws. But I appreciate freedom of speech more.…

The opposing, though not necessarily contradictory cliche is of course some variation of “a lie makes it around the world before the truth is out of bed”. That’s the problem, there’s plenty of situations where the lie has done it’s damage long before the truth can achieve much beyond the academic.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#137

Post by luxuryballs » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 12:42 AM UTC

slibhb wrote: post #37

ericmcer wrote: post #2

Ignoring that Jones is a garbage human and just focusing on the case: that isn’t protected free speech? I don’t know all the rules around when speech isn’t protected but the article doesn’t really cover why this wasn’t. Does this set a precedent that anyone who spouts conspiracy theories about an event is targetable by those who suffered from that event?

If Jones had stuck with "Sandy Hook was a false flag operation to take your guns," he would have been in the clear. The issue was his claim that the families whose children were murdered were "crisis actors".

It’s also interesting because he could still be 100% correct and they actually be crisis actors and the whole nine yards but that doesn’t actually matter in the outcome of the case as far as I can tell.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#138

Post by gpm » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 12:42 AM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #131

hunterb123 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, his "fuck up" was leaking it, second it's still protected under attorney client privilege if AJ didn't authorize it. Your attorney can't just leak (on purpose or accident) information you gave them and it be used against you. Just because you don't like X person don't allow the government to step on everyone's inalienable rights. If you went to trial for a traffic violation and your lawyer accidentally for…

> First off, his "fuck up" was leaking it That may have been a fuck up, in that he didn't intend to do so. But it was still information plaintiffs were entitled to. > second it's still protected under attorney client privilege if AJ didn't authorize it This is wrong. The vast majority of that information was discoverable and should have been discovered beforehand, but Jones withheld it. You can't refuse to "authorize…

> But it was still information plaintiffs were entitled to.

Some of it was (such as the text message that they sprung on Jones during the trial), other parts were definitely not. Both sides seem to agree that there is data involved that would be attorney client privileged up to that privilege being waived.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#139

Post by sleepybrett » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 12:43 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #108

dragonwriter wrote: post #23

Actually, no, the jury verdict on punitive damages is $45.2 million, but that is certain to be reduced before Jones is ordered to pay (there seems to be some dispute over whether a portion of the compensatory damages award is economic or not, and depending on the answer on that, the cap under Texas statutory punitive damages caps would seem to be somewhere between $750k and $1m; even if the plaintiffs succeed in thei…

If Jones can afford to pay any of these figures that it says interesting things about how ineffective deplatforming is and really rather undermines the "big tech is a monopoly!" argument. Most people can't make $4 million in a lifetime, let alone these figures.

This was gone into during the damages trial. When he got kicked off youtube his sales and profits from his boner pills went way up.

Re: Alex Jones must pay $50m in punitive damages for Sandy Hook hoax claim

#140

Post by nathanvanfleet » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 12:45 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #10

I'm a supporter of Jones being able to spread whatever insane theories he wants whether or not he believes them himself, but he slandered the parents of dead children to the degree that some of the most insane and aggressive people in the world think that they're the agents of a world conspiracy with the intent to enslave the planet. $50 mil is a light judgement.

It's gotten to the point where people going out of their way to say they support this sort of talk are kind of weird. You didn't have to make that your headline, but you decided to make it that. You could have just said you think what he is saying is problematic etc, if you disagree with them you can say you disagree.