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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

That's not obvious to me at all. Can a 9-figure media and supplements company inflict 25-50 million dollars on an individual? Sure they can. Selling the memory of a parent's murdered child and defaming them to the point where they are followed into different states by lunatics threatening their lives seems to easily cross that threshold. How disruptive would it be to my life if that happened to me? Over how many years? It's a huge amount of baseline injury, and then it's multiplied by the demonstrable profits earned by Free Speech Systems at their expense.

Remember, it's almost a billion dollars because twenty children were murdered at Sandy Hook, and Jones' company managed to target all of the parents. If only one parent had sued, we wouldn't be batting an eyelash at the resulting damages. But Jones built an immensely powerful media machine, and then aimed it very carefully at his own testicles. Play stupid games, &c &c.

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I don't see how a company can inflict $25 million in damages per person.

Damages for wrongful death usually don't even go this high.

People seemed to have no problem with the idea that Oberlin could have inflicted $36MM against a family. I didn't either! That's how tort damages work.

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.

Apples & oranges again? Hogan is a public figure who might actually lose out on a hundred mil due to reputation damage. A average middle class USA family, not so much.

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.

Well, to be frank, it doesn't matter. Some people probably think any kind of damages for defamation are ridiculous. Others probably think this wasn't enough. It doesn't matter though, because you weren't selected to serve on the jury at the trial. You didn't see the evidence, you didn't get to observe jones' conduct, you didn't sit through days and days of testimony about how horrible and traumatic it was for the families of sandy hook to lose their children and then be called 'crisis actors' by Alex Jones repeatedly. His followers were literally harassing the parents in public.

These damages may be above average and the highest ever in a defamation trial, but Alex Jones really took being a defamatory piece of shit to a new level.

> If only one parent had sued, we wouldn't be batting an eyelash at the resulting damages.

This is not really a convincing response to my comment on the per-family damages:

>> Nobody involved had a reputation that was worth $100 million dollars.

You can't lose value you never had.

> How disruptive would it be to my life if that happened to me? Over how many years?

However disruptive it was, the damages could not reach $100 million unless you either (a) spent $100 million dealing with the disruption, or (b) forwent $100 million of earnings in order to deal with the disruption. (Or any combination.) Again, that hasn't happened. You can't deal $100 million of economic damage to someone who doesn't possess assets worth $100 million. That is a major reason for the concept of punitive damages.

"You can't lose value you never had" isn't a coherent argument. People are routinely awarded damages far greater than their net worths for all sorts of torts. By the logic you're using, if I go to Starbucks and steal the eyeballs out of the barista, I'm only asymptotically on the hook for a lifetime's worth of barista earnings.

You'd also be on the hook for the costs of any associated medical care, seeing eye dogs, etc. I believe I mentioned this:

>> damages could not reach $100 million unless you either (a) spent $100 million dealing with the disruption

You would additionally have some criminal liability, but that doesn't affect damages.

I think you'd find --- criminal liability aside --- that you'd be on the hook for more than the lifetime earnings of a Starbucks barista and the cost of medical care and a seeing eye dog.

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