741–750 of 787 posts
This monetary verdict doesn't make sense in any way.
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Ideally, courts are concerned with legality, not morality.
Civil jury cases are concerned with both. If you commit an illegal act, but with a seemingly moral reasoning behind it, you may only suffer a light punishment. Now, if you are found guilty and your actions and behavior is found detestable by the jury the penalty will be far more harsh within the statutes.
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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.
Anyway if it isn't punitive shouldn't there be some kind of account for how the number was arrived at? I don't see it in the article.
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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 to…
Yes, you've defined what makes the judgement absurd. And because it's multiplicative and due solely to "mean words said on blog", then that leaves sane people to see how ridiculous the whole thing is. Imagine for a minute if Trump decided to sue everyone who called him a Russian agent on TV or in writing. The award would be in the trillions.
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> it's basically the very core of the typical harms that arise from defamation I understand that this is the opinion of you and others. That doesn't make it the law. > take a look at Gibson Bros., Inc v. Oberlin College In that case, there was evidence of communications by college officials saying things like "I hope we rain fire and brimstone down on that store". Also, the college has a responsibility for the behavi…
> I understand that this is the opinion of you and others. That doesn't make it the law. It's not really a question of law. It's more a question of fact ("were these claimed economic harms caused by the statement"), which means its a question for the jury. Which means it's the opinion of the jury that matters. As far as "the law" on this topic, typically the most relevant thing will be the jury instructions. These wi…
"The probable effect on those who heard the statement" is ambiguous. Does it mean the effect on their opinion of the plaintiff? Or does it mean the effect on their actions?
Legally, I believe it's the first. The defendant can be held responsible for the probable effects of their defamatory false statements as far as inducing negative opinions in others regarding the plaintiff. But the defendant cannot be held responsible for some other nutjob, who is not an associate or employee or in some other relationship with the defendant, choosing to harass the plaintiff based on nothing more than defamatory false statements. There would have to be something in the statements that explicitly incited others to commit wrongful acts, instead of just inducing them to hold negative opinions. And, as I have said, in the Alex Jones case I have not found anything that alleges or attributes incitement on the part of Jones.
This is an instance of a more general legal principle that individuals are free agents and are presumed to be in control of their actions, so no third party can be legally responsible for what an individual chooses to do (in the absence of some legally recognized relationship such as principal-agent). Explicit incitement can go against that presumption, but simple false statements that could reasonably induce a negative opinion cannot.
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> I understand that this is the opinion of you and others. That doesn't make it the law. It's not really a question of law. It's more a question of fact ("were these claimed economic harms caused by the statement"), which means its a question for the jury. Which means it's the opinion of the jury that matters. As far as "the law" on this topic, typically the most relevant thing will be the jury instructions. These wi…
> Let's look at the 37.100 for Actual Damages from the VA pattern jury instructions* "The probable effect on those who heard the statement" is ambiguous. Does it mean the effect on their opinion of the plaintiff? Or does it mean the effect on their actions? Legally, I believe it's the first. The defendant can be held responsible for the probable effects of their defamatory false statements as far as inducing negative…
They're jury instructions. There isn't further legal analysis. These words mean precisely what a jury of your peers interpret them to mean. That's it.
You don't get to make a legal quibble over a juror's reasonable interpretation of the instructions. If there's ambiguity, it's up to the jury to resolve at that point (and often jury instructions deliberately have some ambiguity to them—because the job of the jury is to apply sometimes ambiguous phrases such as "reasonable care" to specific facts).
So you can't say "oh, most of society is just misinterpreting the jury instructions", because that just means you might very well lose the argument before a jury!
You say there's ambiguity. Fine. I left a challenge for you. Can you find a single state where the jury instructions are unambiguous and foreclose on my interpretation? One state where the actual harm jury instructions clearly don't allow damages from the predictable actions of third parties?
Frankly, I'm done with the discussion until you try. I've put in effort to cite cases and jury instructions to support my positions, while you've cited nothing but your own opinion.
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Cigarettes kill 7x as many as opiates in the USA every hour, day, week, month, and year. Those companies aren't even fined or put behind a prescription-wall.
This is uninformed. The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement has cost the tobacco industry north of $200 billion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...
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> at 10% margin Even legacy media manages 20%-40% margins; an outfit like InfoWars can probably get way over 50%. What exactly are their expenses?
This is extremely misleading. Legacy media sells ads. Infowars sells products.
LOL what?
> Legacy media sells ads.
Legacy media also typically has broadcasting equipment, large headcount, spectrum allocation, and so on.
> Infowars sells products.
I'm sure those supplements have extensive R&D and product development expenses /s
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Today I learned that $1 billion is more than $6 billion...? /s
Perdue was fined 634.5 million USD, actually.
Why do you feel the need to lie about this? Why are you so desperate to deny an obvious truth? Good men don't lie.
"Attorney General John M. Formella today announced a national settlement with Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, for their role in the opioid crisis, that will increase the amount of funds paid by the Sacklers from $4.325 billion under the original bankruptcy plan to at least $5.5 billion." https://www.doj.nh.gov/news/2022/20220303-settlement-purdue-...