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Comment by CodeSgt | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, this is especially an issue as certain forms of medical care gets politicized. If a doctor is obviously telling people that cigarettes are healthy and alcohol abuse if the key to a long life then of course they probably should have their license revoked. If a doctor isn't certain of the literature or has moral objections to prescribing hormones to trans teenagers, well that one is up for debate.

Similarly see Alex Jones, I disagree entirely with his politics and virtually everything he's ever said, but ultimately he was just fined approximately $1 billion USD for no more than speaking. Honestly seeing that happen to a private entity is more concerning than it happening to a demographic that already requires government approval to legally operate (medical professional, in this case).

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The whole situation with Alex Jones has undermined the confidence I have with our court system and our government. Initially I thought there was some Mandela Effect going on because I could have sworn I remembered Alex Jones losing a Sandy Hook civil suit case multiple times before. Turns out, he’s being sued multiple times by different sets of parents and from what I understand, this latest case isn’t the last one.

Regardless of how justified this feels, I nevertheless worry that using the civil court system in this manner sets a dangerous precedent.

Firstly, because this is a civil matter and not a criminal one, there is no protection against double jeopardy. He can keep getting sued over and over for the same thing. Indeed, it really looks like these parents/their attorneys are out to destroy Alex Jones through lawsuit after lawsuit.

Second, fining someone a billion dollars is just ludicrous. Yes, I know he is not worth that much and will ultimately end up paying far less. But the mere idea that such a large fine was issued undermines confidence that the restitution is in any way reasonable. Not just because the number is so detached from reality, but because such sums look like the financial equivalent of the death penalty.

I am very worried about how civil suits can be used to go after people. To me at least, there need to be additional protections along the lines of what we have in the Eighth Amendment. What I’m seeing with these Sandy Hook cases feels like cruel and unusual punishment. Also keep in mind that you do not have a right to an attorney in suits like these and you have to pay out of pocket.

It is not unreasonable to think lawfare like this will be used against other people in the future.

> Firstly, because this is a civil matter and not a criminal one, there is no protection against double jeopardy. He can keep getting sued over and over for the same thing.

Not by the same people, though. If he damaged ten people, he might owe damages to each of those ten people. That doesn't sound like a problem to me.

> Second, fining someone a billion dollars is just ludicrous.

It seems like your argument is that the sum is simply too large, and that the specifics of the case are irrelevant.

This seems dangerous to me. If someone does actually cause that amount of damage, why should they not be civilly liable? Surely it depends on the specifics of the case to determine if they did cause that much damage or not?

Otherwise, does everyone just get to cause as much damage as they like but have a cap on what they are held responsible for? That doesn't seem right to me. If someone wants to get involved in a course of conduct which can cause terrible damages to others, then they should also be responsible for that.

Do you truly think Alex Jones's speech inflicted a billion dollars worth of damage?

I'd love to see an itemized bill demonstrating that. If he actually did cause that much real damage, sure, it would be fair. But I can't possibly conceive how he would have caused even $100k in real damages, much less a billion. It's equally, if not more dangerous, to fine people ludicrously large, arbitrary amounts of money because they spoke something that went against public opinion.

How much do you think being stalked, harassed, and threatened is worth?

Not a billion dollars, certainly. And did Alex Jones himself do any or even actively encourage any of the stalking, harrasment, or threatening? If he did, I'd say he's certainly much more liable (still not a billion dollars worth of liability) but I've yet to see where he's done either. He made videos, and some deranged lunatics decide to act on the information in those videos.

Are you omitting intentionally that he has made profit from this, so it is a way to mine money from other suffering and from brainwashing idiots, he has a big profitable company, I think the judge evaluated the guys profits, so if he was a random idiot on the street that harass people he would not have got such a giant fine since the random idiot did not made giant profits. \\

I do not see why a real free speech advocate would protect he "right to harass/defame others for profit".

That’s what the jury evaluated and decided. Looks like you have an issue with the jury system itself.

The US is an outlier in letting juries hand down such massive damages awards. In most other common law countries, the jury only decides which side wins, and damages are up to the judge-and judges generally show a preference for more reasonable amounts.

tl:dr; The amount a Jury awards in damages is not actually what the loser pays.

Juries can award w/e they want but the judge still has discretion in reducing the damages (ex. one of McDonalds hot coffee incidents [1]).

Not a foreman, but I believe juries don't get instructed as to what the maximum amount they can legally award is and so the judge to then reduce it. (ex. Depp vs Heard [2])

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depp_v._Heard

Such a system likely still results in higher damages payouts - even after the judge has reduced the jury’s amount - than leaving the issue of damages entirely up to the judge would; which may go some way to explaining why average damages awards (even if we only consider the final amounts after all appeals are finalised) are significantly higher in the US than in other common law countries.

>”Looks like you have an issue with the jury system itself.”

Wanting to reform an aspect of the jury system does not invalidate it as a whole.

We have a concept in our courts called "punitive damages", which exists specifically to punish someone beyond the scope of the "real" damage caused.

Ah neat, I'd heard that term before but didn't know it's real meaning. Thanks! How are punitive damages determined though? Surely there's still some methodology to follow when calculating them, I don't see how any reasonable methology would have arrived at $1b.

Punitive damage calculations vary state to state. Some states cap (TX, where Jones first loss was suffered) based on a multiplier of the "real" damages. Some states don't. In states that don't, punitive damages can be "whatever the jury decides", and the goal is usually to punish outrageous behavior with outsized amounts.

Because there were 14 individual people, with each getting an individual settlement amount, it added up quickly.

Punitive damages have to be large enough to discourage the harmful behavior. That means they need to be scaled to the budget of the person doing the harm, not to the harm itself. Maybe the State should keep whatever of the punitive part seems too much larger than the actual damage.

The alternative is that the fine is just "cost of doing business". Rich people park any old place, any old time, and just pay their parking fines. OK for city government revenue, but bad for public safety, and worse for fairness and civic life.

> Do you truly think Alex Jones's speech inflicted a billion dollars worth of damage?

I urge you to read up on Alex's conduct before, during, and after the trial(s). He spent most of his time mocking the process, attacking the judge, and continuing to defame the parents while failing to comply with basic discovery in a timely way. He also hired incompetent legal representation[1] - probably because they shared his worldview.

I think if Alex had taken the lawsuit seriously and treated it with the gravitas most people would assign to a lawsuit like this, the judgement would be nowhere near $1B. He's his own worst enemy on this one.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alex-jones-lawyers-acci...

I think you're right, had his conduct been better then his outcome would also likely have been much better. That said, I still think the amount is ludicrous and unjustifiable. Even if he had had actively encouraged his followers to burn down the homes and beat up the vehicles of every sandy hook parent the damages wouldn't have reached anywhere near a tenth of the amount he was fine. And as it happens, he didn't do that. He caused emotional damage, and had a tertiary effect of some of his followers acting on their own in a deranged way, but 1 billion just is insane.

The courts are structured to be adversarial, so if I claim you owe me $1 million because of something you said, it is expected that you will vigorously defend yourself and through this process some compromise will be reached that will be more or less "just".

If the defendant fucks around instead of actually mounting a defence, of course the result is going to be a massive win for the plaintiffs. Do you expect the judge to step in and represent the interests of the defendant when the defendant seems uninterested in doing so himself? Alex had the money, connections, and profile to get a very good legal defence. He chose not to. I'm not really sure what you want the courts to do here.

Juries don't make good decisions about damages. This value will be down-adjusted significantly- I would expect it to be more like $50M eventually. Something that could be garnished in a finite time.

> if Alex had taken the lawsuit seriously and treated it with the gravitas most people would assign to a lawsuit like this, the judgement would be nowhere near $1B

What do you think it would have been?

I don't mind the "asshole tax" in courts, but I feel like it should be limited. The guy is an idiot, but all the more reason to judge him fairly.

$1B fine looks like a political decision (especially to his audience), and will probably give even more power to him.

>> Do you truly think Alex Jones's speech inflicted a billion dollars worth of damage?

> I urge you to read up on Alex's conduct before, during, and after the trial(s).

Solid point. Fairness and objective inquiries into damages be damned, if you don't kiss the ring, you deserve the worst.

"Hacker" News endorsing outrageous punishments for not bending over far enough. I, too, recall the portion of the Hacker Manifesto, which read:

  We are loyal subjects of the system, and we shall abide by 
  every rule of decorum which the King hath proclaimed. God 
  praise our rulers, who are wiser than all of us!

I believe it was RMS himself who said:

  We seek neither freedom, nor fairness. If someone wearing 
  black robes decrees something, you must bow down and 
  kiss their feet. It is thus written by St. Ignucious. Amen.

And from the notes of the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club:

  Irreverence for Institute Authorities shall not be permitted.
  They are our betters, and we shall exclude anyone whosoever 
  shall trespass against their Virtuous Rules.

"Hacker" News is truly a blessed community. Thank you for the reminder that real "Hackers" are those who lick the boots of those who rule us, and that insufficiently enthusiastic licking is adequate justification for being destroyed.

Hack The Planet*!

[*: Provided the hacking is done in accordance with the dictates of our betters.]

They say the love of a child is priceless. You might think that priceless means worthless, but others can disagree; in a sense I agree with you that it's quite difficult to nail down. Perhaps the lesson is that one should be careful when doing intangible harm to others?

That seems like the definition of a slippery slope, and not the fallacy. How do you ever quantify "intangible harm". If I make a YouTube video and call a bunch of people peepee poopoo heads and they actually experience genuine emotional trauma from such an abhorrent act, am I then liable for paying them hundreds of millions?

I'm not saying that emotional damage isn't very real and devastating, but it's certainly not something on which our courts should base their outcomes. It's too subjective, not provable, and very difficult to quantify.

> How do you ever quantify "intangible harm"

You get a jury together and they decide. You (and Alex Jones) may not like it, but it's a well established system at this point.

I am not a lawyer, but I suspect if you asked one about your plan to go on YouTube and insult people, they'd advise against it. For one thing, YouTube might see it as a violation of their terms of service, and for another thing, you might be opening yourself up to litigation, which even if you won, could still be expensive.

As for your first point, I suspect the parents and their attorneys have decided to split the lawsuits up strategically. I do not know how civil suit reform could address something like this.

As for your second point, it is indeed true that I don’t think Alex Jones caused a billion dollars worth of damage.

I simply cannot envision the specifics of this case warranting a billion dollars of restitution. If this was a case about an environmental disaster it wouldn’t be an unreasonable sum. So, I’m not advocating for a hard cap on damages for all civil suits. But something does seem wrong when a judge can arrive at such an outlandishly large sum for punitive damages in a case like this.

Edit: Alex Jones caused harm to the parents and their families, but even convicted murderers are not ordered to pay such large sums of restitution. And that’s direct incontrovertible harm.

Murderers generally don't have access to a billion dollars. Alex Jones does.

I can’t find any indication that his net worth is anywhere close to a billion dollars, that infowars has revenue anywhere close to that, or that any of his ventures have a valuation high enough.

If the damages were something like $10-20 million I wouldn’t be making these posts.

> The whole situation with Alex Jones has undermined the confidence I have with our court system

If it makes you feel any better, Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family was fined SIX TIMES more than Alex Jones. 800k people dead for $6B versus a dozen families' feelings hurt for $1B.

Our court system recognizes that the value of a human life is $7.5K, but the value of precious feelings is $83MM.

This seems pretty fair to me.

The good news is that punitive damages haven't been awarded yet. Hoping that the cost for hurt feelings rises north of $100M. Looking forward to suing everyone who said false statements about me in public. It's going to be an incredible payday, and I can parlay the winnings into running a drug operation and killing rural Americans with opioids and only pay a rounding error for everyone I murder.

Can't wait.

Edit: Apologies, HackerNews, are my numbers off? Am I factually incorrect? Are we seriously supporting the position that the Allies should have just hit Hitler with a $45B fine for the whole "Holocaust Thing" and called it even? I know addressing downvotes is frowned upon, but I'm genuinely curious why HN thinks feelings are worth eleven thousand times more than lives.

Edit 2: Understood. Feelings really are worth four orders of magnitude more than lives, on this forum. Got it.

I agree with you and upvoted you, but your choice of language was a bit strong and bordered on inflammatory. That could explain the downvotes I think.

I suspect your post is sarcasm, but you didn't include any markers and I've seen this argument in earnest enough times that I can't just assume it is sarcasm.

Alex Jones isn't the story you think it is. There are procedures to follow in a lawsuit such as discovery. If you intentionally do not follow them then you get in trouble. He may have been able to muster a "I only said things"/ free speech defense if he actually was trying to defend himself in court.

Instead he didn't participate in the lawsuit and the other party that did is assumed to be correct.

> [1] In both the Texas and Connecticut lawsuits, judges found the company liable for damages by default after Jones failed to cooperate with court rules on sharing evidence, including failing to turn over records that might have showed whether Infowars had profited from knowingly spreading misinformation about mass killings.

> Because he was already found liable, Jones was barred from mentioning free speech rights and other topics during his testimony.

[1]: https://apnews.com/article/shootings-school-connecticut-cons...

Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not sure if I see how this changes the fundamental nature of the lawsuit. "Spreading disinformation", whether you profit from it or not, is really just "Speaking your incorrect opinion out loud" in a more negative light.

The basis of the lawsuit was "This man said things that made me upset". And yeah, they were rightfully upset, but it's something that I think any court in a country that values freedom would throw out in a heart beat.

If a famous person spreads lies about my murdered kids for profit which results in years of harassment and death threats it's not simply "spreading disinformation".

That's quite literally all that it is. Maybe you dont like it, I dont like it either, but Alex Jones's part in this was just speaking. The individuals doing the harassment and making death threats should of course be punished. But holding someone accountable for the actions of hundreds of people they've never met is absurd. Did Alex Jones encourage the harassment? Did he tell his followers to go send death threats? If he did, I've certainly not seen it. And if he did, it would be a slightly different story. But speaking your incorrect opinion should not make you liable for the actions of a few deranged individuals who choose to act on that information in a negative way.

> [1] Defendants’ latest malicious statements were part of a continuous pattern of five years of intentional and reckless harassment accomplished through dozens of disturbing video broadcasts, a relentless stream of recklessly false articles published on InfoWars.com, harassing social media content, as well as the encouragement, aid, and financial support to third-parties in furthering this 23 harassment.

The lawsuit literally claims they (Alex Jones) encouraged the harassment.

[1]: https://infowarslawsuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2018-...

The lawsuit can claims whatever it likes. I didn't say that the lawsuit never claimed it. I said that I haven't actually seen evidence of Alex Jones actively encouraging the harrasment. If you have that, please share.

Alex Jones could have argued that he didn't do that. He could have presented evidence. Instead, he tried to game the courts, refusing discovery and refusing to follow standard court procedures. That kind of game results in the courts assuming that the other side is factually correct, without them having to prove it. It's like your football team losing because they never bothered to take the field.

Why did Jones take this approach? I see four possibilities, and they're all bad.

1. He didn't think the rules applied to him.

2. He thought the court system was corrupt enough that he couldn't get a fair trial.

3. He knew he was likely to lose on the facts anyway.

4. He thought that the publicity of "not cooperating with the system" (or whatever) would be more valuable than the cost of losing the case.

Whatever the reason, he did this to himself. He threw away his chance to refute the claims against him, and the result is that the claims against him are regarded as true.

Don't treat the courts as a show. They're not. There are real consequences for the kind of game Jones played.

> He thought that the publicity of "not cooperating with the system" (or whatever) would be more valuable than the cost of losing the case.

Sounds like he won. I can entertain a thought that given he's not going to pay it anyway, he actually wanted the fine to be as high as possible.

> Whatever the reason, he did this to himself

I don't think folks are pitying Alex Jones here. If he exploited judicial system to gain more publicity, this undermines the system. If judge/jury got emotional and gave him a "fuck you" fine, we shouldn't celebrate it, even if the guy is a total asshole.

> Don't treat the courts as a show. They're not. There are real consequences

It's not a show, and yet he got one. I'm not so sure about "real" consequences. Most folks seem to think that there isn't a difference between $500M and $1B fine.

> That's quite literally all that it is

Using a media empire to sustain a campaign of harassment against innocent people is not the same thing as e.g. broadcasting lies about the safety of vaccines.

> speaking your incorrect opinion should not make you liable for the actions

It should when the target of your "incorrect opinion" is a private citizen being attacked because of your misinformation. Your flippant dismissal as "a few deranged individuals" does not match up with reality.

Libel and defamation are forms of disinformation and have long been held to have civil repercussions. This case against Alex Jones is an extension of that IMHO.

I'm not a lawyer so I could be wrong, but aren't those cases only held up and prosecuted when the victim(s) suffered real financial damages? E.g. lost their job, company went under, etc.

I have yet to see what tangible damages Alex Jones caused the parents of the Sandy Hook incident. Emotional damages to be sure, but I don't believe fining someone because they hurt another's feelings is a good precedent to set.

Several of the parents had to move multiple times. Probably accepting less-favourable prices for their old home in the process, not to mention potential loss of career advancement opportunities when you're having to move house constantly.

Other parents were compelled to hire full time security[2], which can't be cheap.

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/parents-of-jewish-sandy-hook-v...

[2] https://www.mediaite.com/news/alex-jones-false-claims-forced...

The basis of the lawsuit was defamation which is different than spreading disinformation.

A lot of the legal documents can be found here [1] but I already know you aren't going to both yourself with the specifics of the case.

The short version is, if somebody sues you, you need to go through the legal motions otherwise you lose by default and then their side is considered factual when determining damages regardless of if it actually was. My personal opinion is that he knew he'd lose under Texas's defamation law and so decided the optics looked better not to fight.

[1]: https://infowarslawsuit.com/

I'm not sure why you feel the need to make negative assumptions about what I will/won't do. Doesn't seen like a character judgement is relevant to the discussion. I even said "maybe I'm missing something".

For some reason, I had thought that there were certain lawsuits that wouldn't even be entertained by the court, regardless of whether the defendant chose to actually defend themselves. If that is the case, I think this should have been one of those. If that's not the case, I still don't see how a fine of $1b, or even $100k, could ever be considered reasonable in this situation.

On the defamation part, someone else responded similar so I'll copy and paste my response here:

> I'm not a lawyer so I could be wrong, but aren't those cases only held up and prosecuted when the victim(s) suffered real financial damages? E.g. lost their job, company went under, etc. I have yet to see what tangible damages Alex Jones caused the parents of the Sandy Hook incident. Emotional damages to be sure, but I don't believe fining someone because they hurt another's feelings is a good precedent to set.

It would be nice if people didn't barf their uninformed opinions all over HN with the excuse of, basically, "idk what I'm talking, come at me bro(with citations pls)".

Then expect people to drip-feed them basic legal education.

I guess doing some basic research on libel, defamation, punitive damages, and IDK.., the case at hand?, isn't contentious enough. Hard to get into an argument with Wikipedia.

Yeah sure, anyone who isn't an expert at the topic at hand should be barred from participating in any discussion about it.

No you've missed the point.

Parent was not claiming you need to be an expert on something to talk about it. parent is claiming you should do at least a bare minimum of research (i.e. read the lawsuit) before making claims about what the lawsuit contains.

You also initially made the claim "[Alex Jones] was just fined approximately $1 billion USD for no more than speaking" which is also (as far as the courts are now concerned) demonstrably false. He was fined $1 billion for encouraging and paying for the harassment of multiple individuals in addition to speaking and other offenses assumed to be true as he did not defend himself through the courts. I mean what information lead you to make this point? This is the problem that the Parent is talking about, any sort of cursory reading of the case would show you why Alex Jones is in trouble.

Are you arguing against the entire legal concept of libel/defamation?

When I was in law school, in the before times, libel and defamation were treated as a holdover from British common law. We learned how they had been winnowed down in the long “arc of justice,” starting with the Zenger trial in 1735. This trend of weakening libel and defamation laws, and any constraints on speech, was treated as uniformly positive.

Weakening... but not down to nothing. It's a lot harder to be found guilty of libel in the US than in the UK, and that's a good thing. You still can be, though, and that is also a good thing.

("Guilty" may be the wrong word, because it's not a criminal offense, but I'm not sure what the right one is here.)

> ("Guilty" may be the wrong word, because it's not a criminal offense, but I'm not sure what the right one is here.)

Defamation is a crime in many jurisdictions, including the US (not federally, but in over 20 states). Prosecutions and convictions are rare-but not non-existent. At least in the US, punishments are light (Wikipedia cites a study saying that the average custodial sentence for criminal libel in the US is just under six months). In free countries, prosecutions are generally reserved for particularly egregious cases (e.g. suppose A does some trivial thing to offend B, so as payback B plasters posters all over town accusing A of sex crimes, with the allegation being completely invented). Given this, the vast majority of defamation cases are civil not criminal.

Do folks going through law school grasp how proliferation of libelous and defamatory statements happens now, without friction and at the speed of light? And the outsized impact it can have as compared to times ago? I would posit that libel and defamation should be even weightier issues than when British common law was around. We live in a time of companies dropping employees like stones seconds after they've gone viral in a poor light and loonies across the globe being galvanized into partaking in many shades of atrocities at the prodding of people who are learned in the ways of persuasive and effective oratory. The import of community (religious or merely cultural) was stronger back then, if someone was saying something shitty in earlier times they'd get a stern talking to by peers and community leaders. Things have changed, the power of those institutions has waned, tort law should thus come back stronger than ever to fill in the new gaps.

I'm encouraged in seeing the turnout of Alex Jones ordeal and am anxiously waiting to see how Dominion vs Fox News unfolds. I am hoping that the aftermath of all this is that journalists/people-pretending-to-be-journalists/anyone-with-a-sizable-platform will be more careful about their reporting and statements. Of course this is all a murky area because many times it's hard to decide what is true and even harder to decide who gets to do the deciding but for getting the obvious things wrong and when signs of bad faith are clearly there the hammer should get dropped more often, I think such an environment would reduce chaos and extremism that we are seeing more and more of.

Is your position basically that I should be able to post "CodeSgt is a sex offender and murderer" signs around your neighbourhood, and to your employer and social circle, and this is completely fine because it only has the effect of making you "upset"?

I almost choked when I saw the headline with that judgement, and I haven't looked into it, but I suspect part of the reason it went so high is because he and his lawyers got caught withholding evidence in discovery and perjurying themselves.

My optimistic belief is the high judgement was due to those extra factors, but maybe a lawyer can correct me.

You charge enough to discourage the behavior. Evidently, a smaller amount did not suffice.

Yes. Don't say things that the public disagrees with. Don't question what you're told. That's the lesson.

Of course I think the Sandy Hook shooting was real, but if someone said it wasn't I'd just think they're an idiot - not a criminal that should be tried in any court.

He wasn't tried as a criminal. This was a civil case between private individuals, under defamation laws. Withholding evidence and perjury, however, are actual crimes.

He wasn't fined, he was held civilly liable for damages.

Perhaps the problem is that the fine accrues only to him and his production company; really there were a lot of people involved in spreading lies about Sandy Hook, and their production and distribution. Or that US lawsuits can produce spectacular punitive damages numbers on flimsy justification.

But winning libel suits is really unusual in the US! Here's Sarah Palin losing a lawsuit this year: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60396231

It amount to the same thing when those "damages" are largely unquantifiable, and the quantifiable financial costs that were incurred by the families as a consequence (security, moving, etc) certainly couldn't have topped $10m, and were likely much, much less than that.

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