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I've found it impossible to find thorough, unbiased reading material about the Alex Jones/Sandy Hook trial. My take is "what he did shouldn't be illegal, but if it is, wouldn't removing the content from the internet and issuing a retraction be enough?" I'd appreciate some reading material if anyone has any.
Jones also declined to put on a defense in certain suits, refused to turn over data when ordered to by a court, etc.
If it wasn’t already clear to him, he has since been made aware that trying to “boycott” a lawsuit brought against you is not the best legal strategy.
Jones Alleged the document demand of him had never existed because no such document had ever be made.
But because a single judge made 1 determination about 1 document that may or may not have even been a document, he was denied all due process, and appeals.
Do you have a guess how many depositions Jones sat for and for how many hours? Do you have a guess how many depositions and how many hours Infowars employees sat for?
or it turns out the vast majority of people opining on this subject don't have a clue what they're talking about
because a party who has gone along with 99% of court demands and a party which has gone along with 0 (for e.g., refusing process itself) are different and justify different sanctions because sanctions are required to be narrowly tailored and not excessive
yes
Jones has turned over more discovery than any similar case I'm aware of by quite a margin. Given the sheer breadth of granted discovery requests, orders, and depo orders (more than any similar case I've ever seen) and the sheer breadth of turned over material given that context, it really puts into context the statement "Jones has a history of failing to comply with discovery orders in a timely manner."
Uh, no. Jones and his employees have turned over more documents and sat for more depositions than any similar case I've heard of. He has a long history of cooperating with and turning over large amounts of documents in response to the absurd levels of granted discovery in this case.
no
when a judge requires you sit for yet another ~24 hours of depositions and ignores doctor's notes of illness demanding you show up and you don't, that would run afoul of the phrasing of your question
but then so what?
when a judge requires you turn over a document you claim not only do you not have but never existed in the first place and you fail to deliver said document, it's dishonest to simply assert "party has a history of failing to comply with discovery orders"
you realize the court docket has answers, replies, transcripts from hearings, and motions from the defendant to all of this?
no
which is why you couldn't be bothered to answer my basic questions nor my argument about why they matter in the first place
instead you want to sit as a lazy arbiter where your ignorant opinions are the default and I must overcome some sufficient level of approved "source" citations over "facts" which wouldn't significantly change your opinion anyway which you've already argued
which is funny given my factual claims are all supported in the court docket from which you allegedly found the document you're linking to me containing the opinions and characterizations of a joke of a biased, activist judge who turned her courtroom into a "documentary" studio
additionally, linking some judge's opinion and characterization isn't a "citation" of the truth of those things, it's an opinion similar to yours
and no, I won't do any of that and since that's what you're here for I'll end this here as example #141213123 of why one-sided "citations!" demands are such loathsome (internet) "arguments"
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There's no reason to talk about anything except the legal issues surrounding the default, which was in some ways odd and in some ways justified. Anyone talking about the huge award is kinda off-base without first understanding that Jones essentially didn't defend himself against it. It's impossible to strike a deal to apologize and retract without showing up, si vis pacem para bellum and all that. Just like you can't negotiate an end to a war without having an army that's shouting how it will fight to the end you can't negotiate an end to a lawsuit when you've defaulted.
Was this stated somewhere you all are repeating it from? I regularly see this "essentially didn't defend himself against it" phrasing on this forum, but I'm trying to figure out how this is an accurate description of either Alex Jones "trials." Alex Jones was explicit barred from a trial on the merits and from arguments on the merits guaranteed to him by both Connecticut and Texas law. In a "trial" allegedly about only "damages," Alex Jones was barred from making relevant arguments (for e.g., various valuation claims) and he was barred from presenting relevant evidence (for e.g., the political bent of witnesses against him) while both judges allowed plaintiff's lawyer to argue irrelevant arguments and present irrelevant evidence. Both "judges" banned Jones from making any comment about a wide range of topics which "essentially" required him to admit his own liability despite his liability admission being irrelevant in this legal default holding in order to make a defense case after the plaintiff's case-in-chief.
So Alex Jones defends himself in the only way he's allowed to by undermining the plaintiff's arguments and witnesses during their case-in-chief and because he doesn't mouth the words whereby he acquiesces to the "judges" forcing him to admit liability, people regularly claim Jones "didn't defend himself," except he did "defend himself."
by "odd," you mean it essentially never happens outside of very specific circumstances whereby a defendant doesn't respond to process at all
that isn't remotely what occurred in any of the Jones cases and in every similar case the most extreme sanction which would have been handed down would be an inference instruction
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At the very minimum he should also apologise for blatantly lying and inventing conspiracy theories about their dead children and refund costs caused by his lying.
And also some reasonable compensation (maybe about 10 000 000 $ per slandered person?).
That's ridiculous overcompensation. For comparison, that's equivalent to the maximum compensation for spending 100 years imprisoned on false charges in some states. Getting slandered on the internet by someone with no institutional power and dealing with petty harassment by people who see it is in no way comparable to being falsely declared a criminal and locked up by the state. It is absurd to argue that the former should payout more than the latter.
It is also possible that compensation for wrongfully convicted are really low.
It is certainly possible that is the case. However that doesn't make it reasonable to compensate slander by an internet rando orders of magnitude more than wrongful conviction is currently compensated.
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Why $10M is reasonable? I mean, spreading vile lies is without doubt despicable, but $10M is more than life earnings of most Americans, and that not taking into account future value discounts. Basically, it's a sum that moves you to a category of "never has to work again unless you want to" and maybe the same for their family (depending on the size). I could understand if that was presented as "reasonable punishment" - this is a ruinous amount for the liar, and if you want to ensure nobody lies in such manner ever, it's reasonable to use a huge fine to ensure that. However, as a compensation, I do not understand why it is reasonable that a person who was a victim of a lie (admittedly, a very vile and disgusting one, but still one lie), should instantly become top 1% rich just because of it? I mean, if they suffered huge economic or physical losses because of the lie, I'd understand this, but did they suffer losses like that?
The state in which the lawsuit occurred explicitly does not allow punitive damages (I can't remember how general this rule is, but it applied to Jones' case), which is why the compensatory damages were so high. As I said at the time, using inflated compensatory damages to circumvent a ban on punitive damages certainly seems legally dubious to me, with the caveat that I'm not a lawyer.
I looked it up again, and the issue was that in Connecticut, juries cannot award punitive damages, but judges can. In Texas, there's a cap on punitive damages which the judge ignored, so that will likely be challenged.
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First, it was hardly "one lie."
Second, why does it matter whether someone becomes top 1% rich, if that is in fact fair compensation for what they suffered. There are plenty of people, after all, who would refuse any amount of money to be subjected to what some of those parents were subjected to. Either the monetary compensation was commensurate with their damages, or it was not. Whether it puts them in the top 1% or 10% or 0.001% is not relevant.
Finally, everyone seems to be forgetting that Jones presumably profited from telling those lies -- that is, after all, why he said them. At the very least, a tortfeasor who profits from his tort should be forced to disgorge those profits, which in this case might well exceed $10 million.
It does matter because compensation is meant to restore and repair the harm that was done to you. If you never were a multimillionaire, you can not honestly claim to restore harm done to you you should become one. When it's grievous bodily harm (say, you lose your hand, or get cancer) it may be different, because loss of life or quality of life is very hard to repair with money, and even to approach it one needs a lot of money. But here it's not the case, that's why I am questioning the reasonableness. And surely the percentile matters - otherwise how would you know if $10M is a lot or not? Money is a social thing, so to know how much money is $10M you need to look at the society. Maybe in some society even $1000 would be a huge sum of money, but in ours it's not a lot. To have this measure, we need to use percentiles.
That's my point - I don't see how $10M is commensurate.
That's not a good argument, since that implies infinite compensation for anything that I would never agree to do voluntarily. Let's say I hate you very much, and would never agree to give you my car for a ride, not even for a billion of dollars, I am very stubborn this way. You break into my house one day and take my car for a ride. No harm done to the house or the car, but I feel very bad about it. Does it entitle me to a compensation over a billion dollars? I don't think most people would agree to that as a reasonable approach.
That's different from a compensation. Compensation is measured against damages, not profits. If you said the court should take all Jones' profits gained from his lies (let's imagine it is possible to figure it out) and distribute it equally between the victims - that would be a different thing, but that's not what you said.
There are a couple of things wrong with this.
First, suppose there are two victims, each of whom was subjected to exactly the same harassment. Victim A is a multimillionaire, and Victim B is unemployed. You seem to the saying that a $10 million emotional distress verdict for Victim A would be perfectly fine, but that a $10 million emotional distress verdict for Victim B would be be unreasonable. But, if, as you say, "compensation is meant to restore and repair the harm that was done to you," that makes no sense.
Second, let's suppose that I am a regular guy, and my family is harassed. As a result, my wife and five kids each attempt suicide. They all live, but are vegetables, and require around the clock care for the rest of their life expectancy, which, for my kids, is probably 80 years each. So, the jury awards me a verdict of about $50 million ($300/day for 80 years for each kid and 40 years for my wife). Would you say that I have been unjustly rewarded? I doubt it, because I have merely been made whole. Therefore, IF the verdict reflects the damages that the plaintiff has suffered, then it is irrelevant where the sum places him on the income distribution.
And, it seems to me that you agree with that; as you say, "When it's grievous bodily harm (say, you lose your hand, or get cancer) it may be different, because loss of life or quality of life is very hard to repair with money,." Well, yes, and so, too, is emotional distress from extreme harassment. So, it seems to me that your real objection is not that the verdict rendered them rich, but that the verdict did not accurately reflect the damages incurred. Perhaps you think that emotional damages are inherently less harmful than other damages, which is fine: Many people agree with that, and they might be right. But that is very different than your claim that the verdict is invalid because it results in the plaintiff becoming rich.
Similarly, when you say, " If you said the court should take all Jones' profits gained from his lies (let's imagine it is possible to figure it out) and distribute it equally between the victims - that would be a different thing," you are again implying that if that rendered the plaintiffs filthy rich, that would be ok. So, again, you seem to recognize that the outcome for the plaintiffs is not actually a relevant consideration, if the verdict is otherwise just (whether the justice flows from the fact that it accurately compensates the plaintiffs for the damages they suffered, or whether justice flows from delivering just deserts to the defendant).
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Claim that the same harassment is more damaging to richer people is absurd. If anything, richer people have more ability to shield from harassment.
I never claimed anything like that. I claimed that if you weren't rich and then became rich, it's not "making your whole", it's much more than that. Your statement of "same harassment is more damaging to richer people" is indeed absurd, but I never claimed anything like it.
You did it in
by claiming that the same harassment should result in different payout based on net worth of victim.
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And my claim is that just compensation for attack on you can be much greater than entire net worth before being harassed.
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While everything you said is true, it avoids the main crux of @JarJarJedi's point. The typical American makes $1-$2 million in their entire lifetimes and, as awful as lies were, it's really hard to argue that the damage they did to the parents is 5-10 times the amount an American produces over 40 years.
Bringing up Jone's "profit" seems irrelevant, since we're arguing over compensation for the victims (which ought to be decided by the harm inflicted on them), not a fine that goes to the government.
My point is that @JarJarJedi's point is misguided. @JarJarJedi's seems to be saying that it is unjust that the plaintiffs received a windfall that places them in the top 1% of Americans. But focusing on whether it is a windfall is a red herring; the question is whether the amount of damages reflects the harm suffered. Presumably, the jury found that the amount in question merely made the plaintiffs whole, because that is what compensatory damages do ("Compensatory damages are intended to make the plaintiff "whole" for any losses resulting from the defendant's interference with the plaintiff's rights." Transportation Ins. Co. v. Moriel, 879 SW 2d 10 (Tex Supreme Court 1994)). So, although the jury might well have miscalculated, the mere fact that the award puts the plaintiffs in the top 1% or even higher says nothing about whether the award is excessive.
And, it is normal that disgorged profits go to the plaintiff, rather than the govt, because that is what incentivizes the lawsuit in the first place. If we want defendants not to profit from their torts, then we have to allow plaintiffs, not third parties like the govt, to have reason to seek recovery of those profits.
It looks like you taking only half of my argument. The whole argument is that the windfall is not reasonable exactly because the damage is not windfall-worthy, so to speak. I know that trying to establish order on suffering is always morally suspect and smells wrong, but if we're talking money compensation, there's no way around it. And once we get past that moral objection, I think, absent new information unknown to me, that $10M does not sound very reasonable against the angle of "make the plaintiffs whole".
First, that was your argument, but it was not JarJar's argument, which was:
Second, I don't know that "windfall worthy" means. Suppose, for example, tomorrow morning I call Nick Sandman on the phone and threaten, "I am going to kill you, you smirking racist." Suppose also that his local federal court has a night court with a super-lightning docket, so that tomorrow evening he wins a judgment of $10,000 against me, which seems perfectly reasonable given that a felony conviction for such threats is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000. See 18 USC § 875(c) and 18 USC § 3571(b)(3). The next day, I do it again. And again, every day for ten years. At the end of that 10 years, Mr. Sandman will have garnered a cool $36,500,000 (I take a break from my campaign of harassment each leap day), placing him in the top 1%. Quite the windfall! Yet I dare say that few would opine that he was not properly compensated for the damage he suffered.
Suppose instead that Nick Sandman lives in the real world, where such courts do not exist, so he delays suing until ten years have elapsed. He demonstrates to the jury that I made 3650 death threats over ten years, and the jury awards him damages of $10K each, for a single lump sum judgment of $36,500,000. Why is that judgment any less an accurate assessment of the damages suffered by Mr. Sandman than were the 3650 cumulative judgments? I don't think there is any way to distinguish them, and hence I don't think the fact that a single large verdict was returned tells us anything, in itself, about whether the verdict reasonably reflects the amount of damages suffered by the plaintiff.
You're replying to JarJar with this post.
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I would not wish to be put through such thing (extreme lies about me and my dead children by someone influential enough to result in idiots and insane people harassing me).
Though I consider being willing to survive through years of that in exchange of massive amount of money such as 10 000 000 $ dollars.
Therefore it seems to me enough to offset damage caused.
And yes, I am not including murders itself in that.
Note also in general I think that transfer of funds to victim should be done more often. You hit someone with a car? That is not your car anymore but goes to a victim. It was not your car or some cheap wreck? 10% of income goes to victim unless huge amount of funds is paid, enough to offset damage you did. You robbed someone? 1000% of what you stole goes to the victims. (note: maybe this is done already in USA). You run automated call spam? Each victim is entitled to 500$. Wage theft? Worker is entitled to 10 times of what they were illegally not paid. Running fraud? You must give back 10 times what you stolen, etc etc.
(if I would be in power to legislate something - then maybe I would end with lower multipliers, but someone losing entire wealth after running large scale fraud seem much more reasonable than going to prison for few months and keeping stolen funds - again, maybe it is problem of local justice system)
"emotional damages" is overused but reasonable in this case. Being victim of top 0.05%* of harassment seems a good reason to get eye-watering amounts of money from chief harasser. In older times other solutions would be used, but this modern one seems preferable.
*1 in 5 000 harassment seems reasonable estimate to me in this case, as in "there are about 168 000 more harassed people in USA and 335 000 000 less harassed ones" but have not explored this one deeply and maybe I was mislead by what reached me.
Going on a tangent here, but I would raise that to "cut their right hand off". Those who invented and perpetuate the practice of spam calls have ruined the commons of "replying to calls from anyone who isn't in your contact list yet".
I would argue that 500$ would be better, because if people responsible can be reached then "get 500$ for spam call" will result in rise of cottage industry of people earning this way and being deeply interested in hunting down responsible people.
That is a fully intended effect.
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One issue about this proposal is with the incentive gradient. The penalties you are proposing seem sufficient to be ruinous to perpetrators, not on the "shucks, guess that business venture failed" level but on the "I have to give up my previous life" one. We know from revealed preference that people are willing to take on significant risks of significant jail time for amounts of wealth that are smaller than something that makes a difference between their current socioeconomic status and a lower one (shoplifting, fraud, violent spats over loaned money...). It stands to reason that if the penalty for a set with as high coverage as {insults that hit the mark, minor tort, minor annoyances, white-collar bookkeeping trickery that passed some arbitrary threshold} is dropping out of your social stratum, then a nontrivial number of people would threaten victims into silence or even outright attempt to murder them (or even just run amok on third parties), because they'd prefer the chance of jail time to the certainty of losing $1m.
Of course, as a red-blooded law-and-order individual you could start imagining jacking up punishments and enforcement for everything else until they no longer have that preference structure, but then you very quickly run into the wall of potential disincentivisation capping at whatever value people assign to killing themselves after giving society the largest fuck-you they can muster. Maybe one day there'll be Roko's Basilisk style scifi punishments you can mete out with certainty, but until then...
Yes, I am aware of this and this is more "and that is why I am fine with Alex Jones fined into nonexistence, if this verdict will be applied" and less "that should be legislated immediately".
If I would be proposing actual law then it would be more reasonable - but still going into this direction.
But for example for predatory banks some actual penalties should be happening. It is absurd that entire sale division blatantly lies to people, companies going bankrupt and people losing their wealth - and nothing happens to people responsible for that. I consider "I have to give up my previous life" as desirable for CEOs presiding over this. Though not "and now they are homeless and starving".
Yes, that is a risk. "You lose your home if you hit pedestrian" may end with China-style "we hit pedestrian? lets be sure that they end dead".
Again, it is more personal emotional reaction that ready legislation. In such cases I put much more effort and thinking into that (and what I got passed was extremely minor compared to what is discussed here, and I put much more effort into it)
That would be unlikely to work, the problem is that many people outright ignore potential negative consequences. I am thinking more about compensation to victims than deterrence.
What happens if the predatory bank is enabled by someone else? If your high-risk clients are minorities and the government says that if you don't lend to them, you get shut down for discrimination, and then a lot of those high-risk clients default on their loans, is it really fair to make the banks pay?
Have bank lied to them and promised that defaulting is impossible, taking loans has no risks or deliberately mislead them into this? Are they blatantly lying about lack of risk? Are they telling them to disregard mandatory disclosure of risk? Are they promising that they will repay less or the same despite that real interest is >0? If no then it does not really apply.
Though bank would have a problem if doing this would be needed to reach some diversity ratio or something.
And obviously, "the government says that if you don't lend to them, you get shut down for discrimination" is stupid and should be fixed. And yes, I know that it is easy to say.
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I think this scenario you are painting is still a lot more specific and limited in scope than what I'm thinking of. People who feel like society treats them unfairly, or even that society has announced its intention to treat them unfairly - which, as hard as this may be for you to theory-of-mind into, will in your proposal include the sketchy businessmen who merely consider running robocall spam campaigns and choleric and borderline people who casually slander others on a daily basis and think it's just how they express themselves - often respond by general refusal to engage in prosocial behaviour, as exemplified by cases ranging in scale from bounded-scope ones such as "triumphalist copyright laws result in software/music pirates who laugh in your face if you make moral arguments about the wellbeing of content creators" (that's me, too!) to pretty general ones like "minority that believes it is being discriminated against will steal and vandalise anything the moment the eyes of the state are looking away".
As it stands, even a pyramid scheme operator will probably stop to help an injured child in a dark alley; I think he would not do that if he though that society's preferred fate for himself violated his sense of justice. I doubt you can run a society with too many people who will not do anything prosocial unless a policeman is standing next to them without it turning into a third-world hellhole.
My expectation is that pyramid scheme fraudsters (and similar) behaving even less prosocially will be more than outweighted by curbing stealing that currently is de facto legal. And that sketchy businessmen will switch to other technically legal or forbidden by unenforced bans or punished but not enough things. Rather than going around and vandalising stuff because some specific scam is no longer viable.
And I disagree with this argument as it seems to be general argument against punishing any criminals short of murderers. For reasons similar as I would disagree with "As it stands, even a thief will probably stop to help an injured child in a dark alley; I think he would not do that if he though that society's preferred fate for himself violated his sense of justice." arguments against actual punishment for theft.
(I do not see a real difference between thief breaking in and causing damage of 10 000$ and stealing things worth 10 000$ and banker convincing the same person to gamble 20 000$ on "it is risk-free, ignore that standard warning template about risks" and proceeding to lose that, and I would love to see both actually punished and treated both behaviour as antisocial evil)
Though at least in USA with current asset forfeiture laws it is clear that care about such things as blocking currently legal stealing is nonexisting among lawmakers.
That is legitimate risk, but currently financial fraudsters will basically laugh at victims, fully aware that in the worst case they will lose what they stolen and get slap on the wrist as their activity was technically legal or de facto legal. Except outrageous cases like FTX where there is a decent chance for some punishment at least for some.
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There's plenty of extreme lies going around, and hardly any of them command such a high price. What does make this particular one cost so much? Is there any evidence it was arrived at through principles, rather than after the fact because people don't like Alex Jones?
Obviously what makes this one cost so much is not the extremity of the* lies*, but the extremity of the effects of the lies. That is what tort damages are about: Compensation for the damages suffered. I don't know whether the exact amount of the damages was justified -- and they will probably be reduced on a motion for new trial, which is quite common -- but are you truly flummoxed by why this outlier case generated outlier damages? Most extreme lies do not lead to people being harassed to the point that they have to relocate, nor do most lead to people pissing on the graves of dead children, nor to most involve victims who are as susceptible to damage as the parents of murdered 7-yr-olds.
"People" did not return the verdict in question; jurors did. A jury in CT and jury in TX, both of which were chosen after lengthy voir dire, and both of which were given a set of principles (i.e., jury instructions) to use when making their decisions. I would suggest that that places the burden on you to show that the verdict was arrived at because those particular jurors don't like Alex Jones.
They can also be about politically punishing a troublemaker. A theory far more likely to be true than the idea he caused $10M worth of damages per person affected, given the evidence.
But people think it was a good or bad idea. If you follow the conversation more closely, you might notice I was asking someone who expressed it's a good thing, to explain his reasoning.
Because you are privy to all the evidence? If you have a link to all the evidence that was presented to the jury, I would like to see it.
You said: "There's plenty of extreme lies going around, and hardly any of them command such a high price. What does make this particular one cost so much? Is there any evidence it was arrived at through principles, rather than after the fact because people don't like Alex Jones?" What is the "it" that was "arrived at" in "this particular case" if not the verdict?
Wait, are you implying there is anything unreasonable about this possibility?
Yes, it was referring to the verdict. Are you missing the sentence where I said "But people think it was a good or bad idea."?
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I think that many other people should get 10 000 000$ fines for malicious lies. For example Musk for his "Sorry pedo guy. You really did ask for it." tweet and that child bride allegations[1].
And no, I do not buy explanation that convinced jury that "pedo guy" is some standard mild and generic South African insult rather than allegation of raping children.
And people who pushed risky financial instruments while claiming that they are risk-free[2]. With fines waived for unaware low-level pushers in call centers and going into millions for higher-level managers, going into 50 000 000$+ territory at level of CEO. Also when CEO ignored malicious behaviour at lower levels as long as they were profitable rather that ordered it. With jail terms for CEOs that ordered such behaviour. And death penalty for companies while I am at this hobby horse.
[1] Assuming that they were false, I have not verified it deeply.
[2] I got some offer of them and they were deeply misleading and whoever prepared this lies was clueless patsy or evil. Either way this banks would be fined into nonexistence in a just world and if that actions were deliberate by management - they would be all in jail.
Should CNN et al be sued out of existence due to Sandman?
Sandmann was not interested in fighting to the bitter end and accepted undisclosed settlement and minor celebrity status. For few smirks, he is now set for life.
Want to be more Sandmannist than Sandmann himself? ;-)
I doubt he is set for life. His odds of winning were quite low.
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Not familiar with this case, from quick look it does not appear to be as large scale or affecting as many people, or involving blatant log-term and blatantly obvious lies, so I would go with "no".
There was a young kid of even college age visiting DC for a pro life March.
A crazy Native American guy got into his face banging a drum. Sandman smirked.
Media with zero diligence signal boosted a short clip making Sandman basically the face of white supremacy. That is, they turned a young private kid into a national story.
Worse the whole video was available that wholly exonerated any perceived wrong doing by Sandman. Yet the media in their bloodlust didn’t do the tiniest of diligence ran with the story before vetting it at all. Kid was subject to a 2 minute hate based on such gross neglect.
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From your example it looks like the only people who should pay 10M$ per lie, are your political opponents. Can you name some example of people who should pay similar fines for saying things you agreed with at the time?
Actually, Elon Musk is not my political opponent. And to my irritation even after that pedo guy I kind of like him despite trying to avoid that.
Also, I bet that many of bank fraudsters and CEO deliberately ignoring evil perpetrated by their bank share my political preferences (at least, enough of them to vote for the same people).
I was always against defrauding people and calling them paedophiles/murderers/etc or claiming to have fake children based on transparently false claims.
So I am not really able to provide such examples.
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Nobody is denying that. The question is whether it is MORE than enough.
To be more precise, I think that 10 000 000$ is enough to offset damage caused and a bit higher than that but not enough to be absurd (I would definitely not take deal to get such harassment and 1 000 000$)
Saying "I wouldn't take such a deal" is kind of a red herring, because when you make a deal it's to your benefit. That is, if someone said "I'd make the deal to let someone abuse for $10m", that indicates that they will actually come out ahead by getting $10m for the abuse. But the law isn't there to help you turn a profit, it's to make you whole. So at best, whether someone would make a deal to exchange $x for harassment is irrelevant. At worst, it indicates that the amount is too high because they feel the deal is in their favor. Either way, it's not a good benchmark for the law.
not really
If typical person in such situation would not take it at all and it would be awful deal then compensation is too small (say, 5$ for cutting off both hands)
If for typical person in such situation it would be amazing deal (1 billion for cutting out single finger of a left foot) then compensation is overly large.
If deal would be not going in either extreme then compensation is sane (though still may be overly large and overly small).
You're ignoring the fact that a person would not take a deal where they break even, even though that's what the law is trying to achieve. So yes, I wouldn't take a deal to cut my hands off for $5. But I also wouldn't take a fair deal where I get the value of my hands, either. I'm only going to take a deal where getting my hands cut off nets me a profit.
For example, let's take money out of the picture, since we can't really figure what the value of my hands is. Let's say that someone wanted to cut off my hands (which are in perfect shape and I have no reason to get rid of them), but that they would replace them with perfectly functional artificial hands. These artificial hands wouldn't be an improvement or a downgrade in any way compared to my natural hands. Furthermore, the procedure would take only seconds, be completely painless, and I would even be able to have my memory of the procedure erased if I wanted. In short, my life after getting my hands cut off would be the same as it was before.
Nobody would take this deal, or almost nobody would. Because - why should you? It benefits you nothing. I have perfectly good hands now, I don't need or want to replace them with hands that will do the same exact thing. Yet this is also a completely fair deal, the exact kind of deal the law strives to achieve. Even though it's perfectly fair, nobody would actually take it.
So then, since a person isn't going to take even a fair deal (only a profitable one), the fact that someone won't take a deal can't actually tell us anything. It could be that the deal is unfair, but it could just be that the deal is fair and therefore not worth the bother.
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$9 million seems like a big margin of error.
I was looking for order of magnitude estimate as far as forum posting goes. I am happy about "50M per person is definitely too much, 1M per person definitely not enough"
If I would be on jury or judge or my opinion would matter I promise that I would put more effort into that.
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To be fair he had already done that publicly before the lawsuit.
Have he also taken down his lies and made clear to his followers that he was lying for fame/gain/whatever?
What caused this?
I believe Joe Rogan, actually.
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No one says it is illegal; rather it the argument is that it is a tort (i.e., defamation). ""From 1791 to the present," however, the First Amendment has "permitted restrictions upon the content of speech in a few limited areas," and has never "include[d] a freedom to disregard these traditional limitations." Id., at 382-383, 112 S.Ct. 2538. These "historic and traditional categories long familiar to the bar," Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of N.Y. State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U.S. 105, 127, 112 S.Ct. 501, 116 L.Ed.2d 476 (1991) (KENNEDY, J., concurring in judgment) — including . . . defamation . . . are "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem," Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 571-572, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942)." United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460, 468-469 (2010)
An unbiased source would be a discussion of tort law in general.
As for a retraction, CT law says:
So, the plaintiff can get damages if: 1) the plaintiff demanded a retraction but the defendant refused; or 2) the defendant acted with malice in fact (i.e,, published a false statement with bad faith or improper motive).
In Jones's case, both are probably true, but not that there was no factual finding thereon because there was a default judgment entered against Jones for failure to cooperate in discovery.
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I think what he did should be perfectly legal on grounds of freedom of the press. But that it most probably is a tort in that specific situation and that he should at best pay a reasonable sum to the families (single digit million bucks or something) to make them whole for the trouble he caused them.
The current situation in an embarrassment to the American Justice System and a display of both pointless cruelty, incredibly silly sentencing, denial of due process and more generally political theater. All things that it should strive to stay as far away from as possible.
Your best bet to get some actual legal information on the situation is unfortunately to watch very long and boring video commentary of the trial. But it's almost all coming from people sympathetic to Jones. You'll have a heap of trouble finding someone who has shreds of a claim of impartiality on a man who is the very essence of polarizing.
Please explain how Jones’ due process was denied.
both judges denied jones's ability to defend himself at trial, barred him from making various substantive arguments pretrial, denied jones's ability to present a broad swath of relevant evidence, among many others
and a long list of other civil, legal, and constitutional rights
Jones refused to mount a defense. He didn’t lose his rights, he declined to exercise them.
Granted, he declined to exercise them because he is crazy and/or deluded. But to claim he is the victim of the court is simply false.
Your claim is Jones wasn't denied the ability to defend himself because despite being denied the ability to contest liability on the merits, and despite his ability to talk about a wide range of relevant evidence during the damages trial, and despite his ability to make many arguments about damages during the damages trial, that Jones didn't lose his rights because he didn't mouth the words which required him to admit liability during his opportunity to make his own case during the damages part of a trial he was defaulted, by law, by the judge?
So other than the ability to contest his liability, his ability to file claims guaranteed by law, e.g., anti-SLAPP motions, his right to present relevant evidence, his evidentiary "rights" for complete evidence, among a long list of legal, civil, and constitutional rights, he "didn't lose his rights?" This is preposterously dishonest.
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He did not refuse to offer a defense. He was denied the opportunity to offer a defense as a sanction.
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They did not. Jones declined to offer a defense, and then when a jury was empaneled only to address the amount of damages, he decided at that point he would bother. Which isn’t how civil suits work.
He ducked depositions and refused to hand over material requested by the court. In the real world, which is admittedly not where Jones mentally resides, pulling shit like that will lead to less than maximally generous pretrial rulings. But this does not equate to a denial of due process.
nonsense
How many depositions and how many hours of depositions did Jones sit for in either the Texas case or the Connecticut case? How many did infowars generally?
please tell us specifically what document in either the texas or conn case the court determined Jones had which he destroyed or refused to turn over during any part of either of these lawsuits
in every other case like this, the max penalty would have been an inference instruction
NOT a default judgment which is absolutely preposterous
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He did not "decline to offer a defense" during the part of the trial where whether he was liable or not was being determined. He was found liable by default by the judge as a sanction. He then declined to make an argument in the damages phase because the only way he could do so would be by admitting liability; if he'd made arguments that he was not liable he would be found in contempt.
Yeah, none of that is a denial of due process. Judges can rule in default if civil defendants fail to meet their obligations.
Why yes, judges can deny due process to people using their powers and it happened, that's the whole argument.
Due process doesn't mean that all the rules were followed and you can go fuck yourself otherwise the Soviet Union had due process for political prisoners. It means that you have a reasonable expectation of being able to defend yourself and present your case. That the game isn't rigged against you from the start.
"We already know you're guilty, this is just a sentencing hearing" isn't due process.
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that's exactly what "due process" means
a person claiming the judges erred in denying Jones the ability to defend himself on the merits is arguing about "due process"
judges can and do deny people "due process"
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And if it was self-sabotage by Jones it does not count, for obvious reasons.
It was self-sabotage in the same way a bully's victim hits themself when the bully grabs their arm and uses it to hit them, then says "Stop hitting yourself".
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