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No, that's false.
The jury found actual damages, and the judge awarded punitive damages, both on the facts presented by the plaintiffs because there was nothing else to consider, but the plaintiffs were not simply awarded what they asked for.
Are you seriously telling me that if a guy has marijuana in the park, doesn’t put up a defense, and doesn’t comply with court orders - the court will slap him with a $3 million fine, or $10 million fine, or $20 million fine, because the prosecutor asked?
Also, for Alex Jones, this is one of the best career moves in history. At most, he will only be allowed to pay 30% of his paycheck - but this singular move has done more for his narrative than spending 30% on advertising would have. I have to even admit, on this specific issue, he’s right - the legal system absolutely overreached.
In which case, the closest equivalent would be if a civilian claimed they inhaled Marijuana smoke, therefore, $20 million. With the judge adding $10 million as a deterrent.
Also, the judge imposed $473 million of it. That’s entirely on the court.
It's provably false that “in any other case" such an amount would have been overruled, since much larger civil damage awards have been issued. If you mean to claim “on similar facts” then its an unfalsifiable counterfactual that just restares your conclusion as evidence for itself.
The only winning move is not to play.
I see your bad faith argument, and let me respond with mine:
The legal system absolutely UNDERreached here.
Think otherwise? You got kids? Let's do a little experiment.
TL;DR: Punitive damages are used as a supplementary sanction in exceptional cases where compensatory damages do not provide sufficient levels of deterrence and retribution.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
Note: Alex Jones claims and behavior pretty trivially clear the bar for "exceptional".
A fallible human legal system that condemns people to Hell, and pulls random damages numbers out of the air, deserves to be treated like a laughingstock of justice.
A lot of the court history is listed here... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones
To me, it looks like some kind of a legal exploit to destroy Infowars and Alex Jones business in general, which I think is deserved (it is essentially a scam), but not very satisfying from a rule of law perspective.
I don't know, ginning up mobs to harass the families who just lost their kids is probably the next worst thing. Moral responsibility involves a combination of harm and awareness of what one is doing. I would be profoundly disappointed if someone could go this far and still not qualify for maximum punitive damages.
The economic focus of the civil justice system, and the fact that the dead can't claim damages for death, means that killing people who aren't the breadwinners that others depend on, and especially children who are themselves dependent economically, usually produces very limited damages, whereas defamation of the living with wide reach and high impact has very large damages. Criminal consequences, of course, scale differently.
I dont think it's about assigning a dollar amount to the victims as much as it's about punishing a morally bankrupt liar for telling the world that a mass killing of children is a hoax to sell the equivalent of diet pills. It's like kicking an asshole in the balls a few times for good measure.
By a preponderance of the evidence, same as any civil trial.
If he wanted to convince the jury that he's not a liar, he had an opportunity to try to do so, but he did not cooperate.
OTOH of course, you can't be sued just for lying. For instance, who is going to sue Trump for lying about the amount of US aid for Ukraine (it's not 300 or 350 billion, "just" 119 billion), about it being "given away", and about the US being the biggest donor (the EU has spent 138 billion)? Maybe Joe Biden?
Go ask the parents of the victims about the amount of harrassment, bullying and outright abuse they were subjected to. $1.5 billion is probably way too low for seeing a bullet hole in your 7 year old's head and then being told that it didn't happen.
I wouldn't accept a trillion dollars for that.
I'm guessing that the amount was also high because it was felt that would be necessary to get him to stop making false statements. E.g. if the penalty was thousands of dollars and he was making millions of dollars then why would he stop?
To people wondering why damages are high and maybe even be on par with a “wrongful death”: since time immemorial it is known in human culture that there can, in fact, be things worse than death.
The nearly $1.5 billion consists of nearly $1 billion in actual damages found by the jury, which you can look up the amounts and kinds of actual damages they found for each individual plaintiff in the case relatively easily, plus $473 million in punitive damages assigned by the judge (punitive damages are not compensation for harms caused to the victims.)
It sounds like you’ve seen the headline of the approximate damage award many times, but never even read any of the information about it.
B. The judge imposing $473 million is ludicrous by itself.
C. Even if Jones was not complaint, consider my “marijuana in the park” example.
If a guy smokes marijuana publicly, someone smells it, they sue, the guy doesn’t follow orders and lies - does the lack of compliance mean that mean the court can impose $20, $50, $100 million? No. It is still not proportionate to the crime.
D. Unless you can prove he directly forced his followers into an action, believe me, I don’t think you want me killing someone, then having you be sued because I found one violent comment from you that “incited” me.
Especially if that someone has authority, a judge or maybe a president. Citing you as my inspiration because you vented on a Thursday afternoon shouldn’t make you personally liable for $200 million.
B is sort of begging the question. You start by saying the award is too much and your proof is just you saying the award is too much a second time.
As far as C goes, yes, eventually. But a more accurate example would be a guy selling marijuana to thousands of people and then telling them over and over again despite multiple court orders to go smoke it in the park.
For D, again, we're dealing with direct incitement of illegal behavior. Not "someone should kill that guy" but "you need to go kill that guy right now" and again you're ignoring the context of multiple cease and desist orders that were willfully defied. A court system whose only answer to defiance is politely asking a second time is not a court system.
A judge can issue a judgement nothwithstanding a verdict only of no reasonable jury could have reached the verdict on the ecidence presented, given the applicable (in this case,as is generally the case in civil cases, “preponderance of the evidence”) standard of proof.
That's a very easy standard of proof to meet when only one side presents evidence. Play stupid (intentional default) games, win stupid (larger civil verdict than you would have with even a minimal defense) prizes.
> The judge imposing $473 million is ludicrous by itself.
Based on US Supreme Court precedent, depending on wilfullness of the conduct and othee specifics of the circumstances (which, based on what was before the judge to consider, it is reasonable to find that even the outer limit was met), punitive damages can be reasonable up to a single digit multiple of actual damages. Here, the punitive damages were around half the actual damages
What's your basis for claiming that the punitive award is unreasonable?
> Even if Jones was not complaint, compliant my “marijuana in the park” example.
What about it? The example fails to be analogous and is irrelevant; it obscures rather than illistrates whatever argument you are trying to make with it, as does whatever that sentence abusing “compliant” and “complaint” above is.
https://apnews.com/article/alex-jones-infowars-bankruptcy-sa...
>The shooting had barely happened when Jones began pushing the falsehood that it was a hoax. Victims’ families who sued Jones said they were subjected to years of torment, threats and abuse by people who believed the lies told on his show. One father said conspiracy theorists urinated on his 7-year-old son’s grave and threatened to dig up the coffin.
And not only that, it likely would have continued in perpetuity with the continued operation of Infowars.
More likely he just has wealthy friends/allies.
Even if some party comes in and purchases it, what is to prevent the assaulter from buying it back, he is already offering 8 million in cash, wihch means any one buying it for less will be able to make an immediate profit. However, if the judge can ban it from operation entirely that will be valuable as at least one less website peddling blatant lies.
A lot of the victims agreed with you, which is why they agreed to forfeit any claims they had if the sale to the onion went through a few months back (which would result in the site either being shut down or being distorted outside its original intent so much that for all intents and purposes the infowars that hurt them would exist no more). The judge decided to void that sale because he knows better than the victims what the victims want and he decided the victims wanted the cash amount of the sale to be as high as possible.