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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

#701

Post by jacobolus »

hunterb123 wrote: post #681
jacobolus wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in other words, only people with a reputation for integrity should have to abide by the law, and as long as someone is a known pathological liar, they should be allowed to defame and send armies of trolls to harass anyone they feel like, whenever and as often as they like?

That's a bad faith interpretation and nowhere near what I said. To prove that he slandered them you have to prove that he knew it was false. If someone truly believes what they are saying, it's not defamation. What I'm saying is his record and his attitude all indicated he truly believed it, imo. The same people calling him crazy / a conspiracy theorist are saying he did it with malice / intent. Those are contradicti…

It is very clear that he doesn’t believe his own nonsense (did you follow the trial?). He’s not “crazy” in the sense that he does not comprehend reality, but rather in the sense that he is a psychopath who doesn’t have empathy for other humans and doesn’t have any respect for society and its basic norms and rules, including civil/criminal law.

The dude figured out a way to personally profit off the murder of a bunch of 6-year-olds by calling them all actors and then mercilessly targeting their families for harassment. It was beyond malicious: one of the most heinously sadistic patterns of behavior in American history. Your defense of it is grotesque.

With any luck, criminal charges will eventually catch up with him and he’ll spend many years in prison.

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

#702

Post by greyhair »

tptacek wrote: post #587
scarab92 wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Oberlin case had damages of $25 million, not $36 million, and that was the combined award to number of individuals plus a company that suffered a significant loss of revenue. Apples vs Oranges.

I don't agree. But if you'd like another example: Hulk Hogan got $115MM personally from Gawker, over a sex tape.

If I could get $115M for a sex tape, I'd be making one every week.

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

#703

Post by yucky »

tptacek wrote: post #643
yucky wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say it's precedented, can you cite the precedence? The guy is/was a conspiracy blogger, that's it. You would think he destroyed the housing market or droned thousands of innocent children with that sort of fine. Which is what makes it so absurd.

Can I cite the precedent of an individual plaintiff winning more than $50MM in a civil judgement? Sure. Hulk Hogan won $115MM in the Gawker case.

>Can I cite the precedent of an individual plaintiff winning more than $50MM in a civil judgement?

No, can you cite a precedent for someone being ordered to pay almost a billion dollars for saying a mean thing on a blog. You said it's precedented, I was asking for the precedent.

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

#704

Post by yucky »

tptacek wrote: post #644
yucky wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need to ask "what if" because we know he made nothing remotely close to a billion. So now what?

If the judgement holds, all his liquidatable assets will be seized and his wages will be garnished perpetually until the total amount is paid or he is put in the ground. Not super complicated, I don't think?

I think you replied to the wrong comment, this response does not follow the post that was being replied to.

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

#705

Post by thwayunion »

account42 wrote: post #683
thwayunion wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fines for opioid producers and various enablers are in excess of $26 billion and still counting. Not nearly enough, mind you, but still -- much higher than the amount being discussed here. There are also two important distinctions: 1. The American court system is inherently adversarial and judges/juries have a lot of discretion. The strategy employed by the defense does matter and a bad strategy can be expensive.…

> The fines for opioid producers and various enablers are in excess of $26 billion and still counting. Note that gp said "people who released opioids upon the American public". How much of those $26 billion fines are towards individuals that profited from those opioids rather than some fictional entity that can just be re-created as needed.

How much of the $1B will be paid by Jones vs by Free Speech Systems? Free Speech Systems is a co-defendant in the Jones case and is likely the entity that will pay out the vast majority of the damages.

The Sackler family was listed alongside Purdue pharma. More importantly, personal liability in opioid cases goes FAR beyond civil damages. Dozens of physicians have received fines comparable in net worth to that fine Jones received. Much more important, those physicians have also received prison sentences. Opioid litigation is still ongoing, so the $26B is a floor not a ceiling, and the settlement didn't preclude further prosecution or litigation against a large number of potential defendants.

Jail time and additional financial penalties remain on the table and a real possibility, including for individual drug company execs and major shareholders. In fact, at least one drug co exec has already been charged criminally, found guilty, and received a prison sentence.

If any drug company exec or investor acted as brazenly as Jones has, they will certainly receive a huge financial penalty and a stiff prison sentence. Unfortunately, most of those people are much smarter than Jones so prosecution won't be nearly as open-and-shut.

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

#706

Post by bdhess »

dragonwriter wrote: post #575
darth_avocado wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The courts are part of the government Right, but that is not how the law is applied. In a civil lawsuit, court or the government is not the plaintiff or the defendant, and therefore first amendment protections do not apply. There are first amendment protections when public officials are involved in the defamation suit. But beyond that, it is well established that first amendment does not protect this kind of speech…

> Right, but that is not how the law is applied. In a civil lawsuit, court or the government is not the plaintiff or the defendant, and therefore first amendment protections do not apply. It absolutely is, which is why thr First Amendment limits the conditions in which civil defamation damages can be awarded, see, e.g., Times v. Sullivan . EDIT: In fact, Times v. Sullivan rejects this specific argument, saying: “Alth…

You have the public figure rules backwards. Times v Sullivan provides a higher bar when the /target/ of the alleged defamation is a public figure.

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

#707

Post by CyberDildonics »

chrisseaton wrote: post #647
CyberDildonics wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You understand that they're reporting the news and not predicting the future right?

> You understand that they're reporting the news and not predicting the future right? No they’ve done the opposite of that here - saying he will pay is predicting the future (badly). Saying he’s been told to pay would have been reporting the news. (The headline has been changed if you weren’t aware, so they must agree it was wrong.)

Not sure if english is your first language, but the BBC is a news organization and here they are just repeating the verdict of the case.

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

#708

Post by akerl_ »

pen2l wrote: post #698
tptacek wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's better with Barro than when he's trying to make Legal Radiolab. :)

Curious: when are you guys listening to these podcasts? While driving? While out for a run or something? Certainly not when on the computer right - cause god knows I couldn’t do that kind of multitasking. I’d love to go through the archive of past Ken White podcasts but I don’t know how to make the time for it. Are you listening to them at 2x speed?

I have a 1 month old, so I suddenly have both a ton of time spent driving to the store to get supplies and a ton of time spent just sitting and rocking back and forth.

I don’t think this is the most efficient way to carve out time for podcasts :D

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

#709

Post by sophacles »

entiex wrote: post #335
shadowgovt wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this particular venue, damages were determined by the jury (which is not the case in all states). Relevant to that process, Jones took the stand in his own defense, to show remorse and indicate why the jury should find for a lower penalty, and... Did the opposite of that. He lost his temper and managed to strongly indicate he had learned nothing and showed no remorse. Juries tend to take a particularly dim view of…

But these aren't puntive damages, they're compensatory damages, and plainly excessive ones at that. Alex Jones level of remorse has no bearing on the level of damage he caused, and so should have no bearing on the amount of compensatory damages. To the extent that they did, that's an injustice. These damages are absolutely insane for emotional distress and defamation. The average lifetime earnings of a US citizen are…

What does the lifetime earnings of the plaintiff have to do with anything? Jones made money by lying about these people. The value of the reputations he destroyed is not what you think it should be, not what you think would be average earnings for a different person, but rather what the market paid to the liar for his lies and the economic benefit he gained from them.

His lies had a measurable value of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, so the plaintiffs' reputations had that value, and damages should be calculated against that.

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

#710

Post by thwayunion »

yucky wrote: post #703
tptacek wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I cite the precedent of an individual plaintiff winning more than $50MM in a civil judgement? Sure. Hulk Hogan won $115MM in the Gawker case.

>Can I cite the precedent of an individual plaintiff winning more than $50MM in a civil judgement? No, can you cite a precedent for someone being ordered to pay almost a billion dollars for saying a mean thing on a blog. You said it's precedented, I was asking for the precedent.

Oof. I'll do the sentence diagramming for you.

OP said: "It's not a BILLION. It's a BILLION divided by fifteen plaintiffs, which brings the per-plaintiff number to a high-but-precedented number."

Th adjective "precedented" modifies "number". In this sentence, "number" refers to the quantity "a BILLION divided by fifteen plaintiffs".

Clearly, it's the per-plaintiff number that OP refers to as "precedented", not the total sum.

Figuring out that "precedented" refers to 1B/15 in the above sentence requires roughly a fifth grade reading level. The fact that InfoWars has an audience is become less surprising by the comment.

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