Hacker News Reader

Comment by GamerUncle | Hacker News Reader

This is more than the amount that people that lied about WDM's in the middle East were ever fined with. Consider they killed millions. Please know that I am not siding with Jones but this is ludicrous.

View on HN

This is a fair judgement against Jones. A fair judgement against the people who lied about WMD's and killed millions via the war in Iraq would be life in prison, for a start.

Just because the criminals at the top get away with war crimes doesn't mean the criminals lower on the totem pole shouldn't be punished. It's a false equivalence to claim otherwise.

That is definitively not the definition of a false equivalence as I did not claim he should go scott free. However I doubt that there is anything fair regarding a 900 millon dollar punishment on a person that has a net worth that is orders of magnitude smaller.

Just the one order of magnitude, really[1] - "The forensic economist also estimated Jones' personal net worth between $70 million to $140 million."

[1] https://www.insider.com/alex-jones-free-speech-systems-infow...

A lifetime of garnished wages seems like a small price to pay for a millionaire who makes a career out of peddling hatred that ruins other peoples' lives. And they didn't just make up the number out of nowhere; it's based on estimated damages that his actions caused. I'm not a lawyer so I can't speak to precedent or similar judgements in other cases. In any case, he will appeal, so we'll see what the final number actually comes out to.

In that case, the answer is not to fine Jones less, but to fine the WMD liars more.

And anyone who subsequently voted for them or gave them money. I think they all should pay couple hundred million to victims and then spend rest of their lives in prison.

bad thing unpunished, therefore other bad thing not worth punishing?

If you lie in a way that lets the government ruthlessly murder millions you get promotions and a cushy pension.

It does seem based far less on his actions than on their personal opinion of him. That ought to make everybody nervous.

If you follow the trial at all, you'll see that this was not just "he said a bad thing one time and people are mad at him." He has a strongly demonstrated pattern of lies, perjury, obstruction of the legal process, and encouraging harassment against the Sandy Hook families. Most of the people saying "everyone should be afraid of this" are arguing in bad faith.

but absolutely none of that, save the encouragement of harassment, has any bearing on what the victims suffered from the behavior the lawsuit is fundamentally about. These damages are, supposedly, compensatory, and so the only relevant factor is supposed to be what the victims actually suffered.

Forgive me for wondering whether an account created 27 minutes ago is arguing in good faith on a topic that frequently gets brigaded by FUD trolling. An actual lawyer will have to weigh in on whether this fits the damages awarded in similar cases.

I think the point here is that it doesn't really matter whether the lawyers call it "compensatory" or not. Many legal terms don't really mean what it says on the tin. But we're talking here from a common-sense perspective: is the intent behind this fine, however it is described, to compensate for actual damages suffered, or to punish the conduct? And for it to be the former, it has to be in line with actual damages.

You mean on the jury's personal opinion of him?

A defendant has a right to trial by jury. The consequence of exercising that right is trial by a jury.

In some venues, "unfair" (quotes here because reasonable people can dispute how "fair" is to be assessed in a circumstance such as this) damages rulings are back-stopped by statutory maxima. I don't know Connecticut law, but that appears not to be the case here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com