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Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#231

Post by jmull »

wara23arish wrote: post #96
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just "saying something is a hoax". It's deliberately lying, for years, for his own profit, in a way that caused significant amounts of damage to the people he was lying about. Should that be free from consequences? No. No, it should not be. And, since there was profit from the lying, shouldn't the damages be greater than the profit from the lies? Yes. Yes, it should be.

are we holding all news to the same account regarding deliberate lying for profit? i hate double standards

> are we holding all news to the same account regarding deliberate lying for profit?

Yes.

You can sue news media companies under the same laws Alex Jones was sued. People do it all the time.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#232

Post by cogman10 »

zackees wrote: post #24
ivraatiems wrote: post #4

This is great news, but we should temper our expectations: It's likely that Jones will appeal and keep this tied up for years before he has to pay anything. Even if he is eventually obligated to pay some amount, it is unlikely to be what the jury just decided. And even if it is what the jury just decided, Jones' company is already "bankrupt" (yet still on the air) and he will almost certainly avoid liability through…

Quoted post unavailable.

Alex got financially destroyed because he blatantly and repeatedly failed to comply with court orders. Simple orders like "show us your financials".

He was defaulted because he and his lawyers chose not to participate in the civil legal process.

As for "wrong words" if you watched, it was not just a few "wrong words" it was YEARS of vilifying the sandyhook parents. It was hiring "reporters" to go harass them. It was sending someone on a mission to disrupt a fun run.

And further, because it brought in customers, he ignored anything that countered the narrative of "sandyhook was fake" Even as recently as last week he was calling sandyhook staged.

He then went on to lie, repeatedly, in court and deposition (which was shown multiple times).

But finally, free speech does not mean "I can say whatever I want whenever I want". Libel and slander have been a part of the civil code since literally the foundation of the country. Lie, knowingly, in a way that harms people, and you'll pay a price. It was WELL demonstrated that Jones and his crew knew they were lying but continued anyways.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#233

Post by fsckboy »

alexb_ wrote: post #97
zackees wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I normally would agree with you - I'm very pro free speech - but what Alex Jones did was not just "the wrong words", it was blatant slander that permanently ruined the lives of these people. I understand why you're concerned, but we've had slander laws forever, and this is exactly what it's used for.

No post body was provided.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#234

Post by pdonis »

techsupporter wrote: post #123
wara23arish wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

shouldn’t the harassers be tried ?

Some of them have been (for example: https://www.mcall.com/hc-sandy-hook-denier-harrassment-0225-... ) but the main problem is that it is, as most of us posting here know, difficult to track down the individuals directly performing the harassment. Alex Jones is directly inciting people to go harass the plaintiffs so he bears liability for his actions.

> Alex Jones is directly inciting people to go harass the plaintiffs

Where is this accusation made by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit? The only accusation I see is that Jones and his associates made defamatory false statements about the plaintiffs. As far as I can tell, that was the basis for the ruling, not any claims of incitement.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#235

Post by dragontamer »

akerl_ wrote: post #188
dragontamer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You couldn't lie in the 1970s or 1980s. If you did, you would be sued for libel or slander (depending on how exactly you lied). In the 90s, 00s, and 10s, we somehow forgot about libel / slander laws. I'm happy to see that something as egregious as Alex's Jones's lies here are finally getting punished, but I'd like to see more protection from libel/slander in modern 2020s era America. ------ Lies, traditionally speaki…

At risk of being pedantic, the bar for defamation is considerably higher than “lying”. Very relevantly for cases like this, the plaintiffs were required to show that the false statements caused them harm, where the easiest kind of harm is financial harm (like losing your job because of the lie). Notably, I can put up a billboard in my town that says “All of dragontamer’s code is buggy and it makes your computer smell…

> the plaintiffs were required to show that the false statements caused them harm

IIRC, only for public figures.

The bar is far lower for private figures btw. A lot of libel/slander that would pass for public figures (ie: Politicians) are absolutely illegal and would be charged if levied against private figures instead (such as me, or the Sandy Hook victims)

> Notably, I can put up a billboard in my town that says “All of dragontamer’s code is buggy and it makes your computer smell bad”, and we’d be a long way off from you successfully suing me for defamation.

Hmm... I think the bigger issue here is whether the suit would be enough reputational damage to even get to damages. IIRC, there's minimum amounts of damage done before any suit is even considered (me lawyering up would cost more than the reputational damage in that case, so it just wouldn't be worth it).

The bar is set at a certain level of damages that I expect to get awarded (and courts also reject any case where the damages are too low). This is more due to pragmatism / the innate inefficiencies of court cases that make it less likely for all cases to be considered... rather than what is strictly legal or illegal.

IE: Even if we were to make it easier to sue for smaller amounts of reputational damage, no one would do it because of the high costs of lawyers in general (and high costs of a full court case).

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#236

Post by akerl_ »

ggm wrote: post #221
akerl_ wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At risk of being pedantic, the bar for defamation is considerably higher than “lying”. Very relevantly for cases like this, the plaintiffs were required to show that the false statements caused them harm, where the easiest kind of harm is financial harm (like losing your job because of the lie). Notably, I can put up a billboard in my town that says “All of dragontamer’s code is buggy and it makes your computer smell…

But it would naturally lead to lawyers letters and probably your apology and a costs settlement on the steps of the courthouse. The settlement might be zero sum, but you would expect a competent lawyer to advise you to back down gracefully all things being equal, assuming you lacked any evidence for a truth defence. Oftentimes, the outcome isn't about winning in court. It's about the restitution of the potential harm…

No it wouldn’t. That’s what I’m saying.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#237

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

donatj wrote: post #176
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not at all what happened. Jones lied in a deliberate attempt to provoke harassment of these poor people. If owned a radio show and I go on and said you were a child rapist and should be stopped by any means necessary would you believe me faultless if you got attacked?

> a deliberate attempt to provoke harassment of these poor people That seems superbly unlikely. If that were true, what would he stand to gain from that? What did he have against these people? I can't imagine he was just sitting there chuckling maniacally "yes yes I'm going to hurt these people who just lost their children". That's an imagined cartoon

You're right, he may not have done it deliberately for the harassment, but he clearly had no qualms about it and made no move to stop it when he knew it was happening. He deliberately lied, and deliberately spread false, vicious claims about the parents.

He makes a living of spreading fabulous and wild lies designed to spread fear and anger. In this case, and in the context of all those other anger fueling claims, he lied and said that the shooting was a false flag, that no one died, and that the parents were crises actors who faked the death of their loved ones because the state was going to use it as an excuse for gun control, and he continued to claim it, even after the parents were harassed, even after they initially sued him, and even went so far as to make accusations about the parents and judge on TV during the trial.

What do you believe his goal was? And do you believe those claims don't meet the requirement for defamation? Again I ask how you'd feel in my proposed scenario, if I accused you of being a child rapist on TV, even if I didn't say you needed to be stopped, but that you were raping children for satan. Would you think that's just fine because no one rational would believe it?

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#238

Post by mdp2021 »

glonq wrote: post #136

I don't want to live in a world where Alex Jones has access to a billion dollars. But TBH I don't really want to live in a world when Alex Jones exists at all.

> exists

The issue is not with exceptions (every village is entitled to having a fool), but with the trend of large amounts of people giving them credit.

Especially in a wave of mounting relativism trying to "soften the distance between lunacy and truth".

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#240

Post by wyager »

AlexandrB wrote: post #140
wyager wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making up a narrative for why suppressing free speech is acceptable in this instance, not discharging the notion that free speech was, in fact, suppressed. The fact that a conspiracy talk radio guy can get hit with a billion dollar fine for some off-hand nutso claim (that he subsequently recanted!) is a very unpromising barometer for the health of free speech in our country.

Alex was free to say it and the people he defamed were free to sue him for saying it. Alex was free to hire competent legal counsel for the trial(s), and he hired a bunch of wacky, like-minded nincompoops instead. There were so many points in this saga where Alex could have made decisions that would have made the outcome less severe and he doubled down almost every time instead. Even as the last trial was wrapping up…

> There is such a thing as consequences for your actions.

A system which produces effects extrinsically equivalent to direct proscriptions on free speech is not better than a system which explicitly proscribes some speech, and is arguably worse, because it tricks credulous people into thinking it's not as bad.

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