8 ms·

Maybe I’m out of touch, but doesn’t a $1.4b dollar settlement for this seem rather… large?

by mikeodds 5mo ago

kikokikokiko 5mo ago
[flagged]
- BadBadJellyBean 5mo ago
  He hurt innocent people with his voice without regrets. He wanted to die on that hill and if so he can be lucky that only his voice might die.
  - kikokikokiko 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - LarsKrimi 5mo ago
      What would instead have been a reasonable punishment? Either he truly believed that the kids at Sandy Hook were actors, or he was using it as part of his grift and making money of it. As far as I can tell he has not reversed his stance on it
    - tsimionescu 5mo ago
      He had every possible chance to argue his case, both against culpability and then against the specific damages, but both he and the lawyers he hired refused to do so. This 1.4b dollars was not a particularly harsh judgment coming down from the establishment (note that the establishment is the president Jones was a paid campaign member for), it was the result of his implicit acceptance of every claim the Snady Hook parents made.
  - hagbard_c 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - hagbard_c 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      - defrost 5mo ago
        As a drive by reader that votes, I can guess why you copped a few whacks; The tone is off and it appears to carry the implication that you might believe that none of the above (Jones, Piker, Owens) should be landed with fines despite on the face of it saying the opposite. A cleaner comment would be better; just explain what it is that Piker has done that is equivilant to Jones' multi decade harrassment of the Sandi Hook parents, ditto Owens. ( for record, I'm non-USAian and unfamiliar with either Piker or Owens )
        hagbard_c 5mo ago
        It would have been far more interesting to read your reasoning instead of having you click that down-vote button. I don't agree with your reasoning but that is the point: we could discuss it, I could explain who Piker (a left-wing icon being pushed as a 'bro' by the party while he spouts utter tripe and nonsense, calling for murder of political opponents) and Owens (a right-wing podcaster who used to be part of the right-wing establishment until she went fully anti-Semite and general conspiracy theorist). I'm not American either but whatever happens there affects us directly or indirectly so I do keep check on the news from the west.
        defrost 5mo ago
        > It would have been far more interesting to read your reasoning instead of having you click that down-vote button. Ahhh, I read https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments feed and saw your "Can the down-voters for once let go of their pacifiers" which prompted me to look at context. As a general rule I prefer to engage with things I disagree with rather than simply downvote or flag. I note now (I'm GMT +8 and have been asleep since last here) that both your comments above are [flagged] and [dead]. The HN mods, dang and tomhow, really do like to push content, engagement, curious discussion, etc. over snark, partisan whiplash, cranky shit, etc. Re: Piker .. the name came up again in some other context (some speculation about a recent interview in or with the NYT) and so I watched a recent (last 14 days IIRC) interview with him with someone from Mother Jones .. on the bases of that single exposure I personally wouldn't dot point summarise him as "spouting utter tripe and nonsense" - he is capable of debating his opinions, has a good grasp of the political landscape, and is clearly a devisive figure in the US political landscape that would get a lot of hot takes and slanting. Again, I've only a 20 minute exposure, but he does have a good point that he has literally thousands of hours of live twitch streaming, discussion, and in the moment rambling through hypotheticals before landing on a position - ie. he's someone that anyone can build a rolltape of short clips of and easily misrepresent and take out of context. Addendum: from your peer comment: > just like Hasan Piker ('the Jews are behind all it all'), uhh, my take from a 20 minute discussion is that he's strongly against Israel "the aparthied state", the zionist attitude, the current holders of power in Israel. In that he's aligned with, say, the Jewish Council of Australia: https://www.jewishcouncil.com.au/ https://www.jewishcouncil.com.au/
- OtherShrezzing 5mo ago
  I’m just not sure you can make the claim that this is an issue between the outlet and the establishment. It’s had hosts like Roger Stone doing 5 episodes a week. He’s the former campaign advisor for the sitting president of the United States, and advisor to Dole, Bush (both), and Reagan. It doesn’t get more establishment than that. So the “down and out anti-establishment underdog” narrative doesn’t apply in my opinion.
  - pjc50 5mo ago
    To people like that, random college students are "establishment" because they are lefty, and the literal President of the United States is "anti-establishment" because he uses slurs on social media.
- pjc50 5mo ago
  If people want to get their "hard truths" out, they shouldn't contaminate them with 9/10 parts of lies, and they certainly shouldn't run a harassment campaign against the parents of murdered children. > Infowars delenda est. Yes.
- rob74 5mo ago
  > 5 will be crazy cucko insane shit, 4 will be common sense american conservative talking points If you ask me, it's getting harder and harder to draw a line between those two categories...
mcdonje 5mo ago
We're not going to have a rehash of the McDonald's coffee settlement argument here, are we? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages
- Schiendelman 5mo ago
  She deserved way more than that for the way they tried to smear her afterward!
  - ziml77 5mo ago
    Seriously, the reporting on that was so terribly biased that many people still think it was a frivolous lawsuit.
    - watwut 5mo ago
      The result was wrong. And yes, I read the contra arguments put on and they were not convincing.
      - Schiendelman 5mo ago
        Your entire opinion is based on an expensive propaganda campaign. Is that who you want to be?
    - dvlsg 5mo ago
      It's honestly kind of chilling just how effective smear campaigns can be. I don't think there's any reasonable person who could read the full medical description of the injuries sustained and think "yeah 2.7 mill was too much".
- some_random 5mo ago
  Stella Liebeck was awarded 2.7 million in punitive damages, that seems like a much more reasonable number than 1.4 billion.
pie_flavor 5mo ago
The context is that Jones blew up the court process every chance he got, setting a new record for contempt fining. The most important piece was refusing to comply with discovery (his lawyer was so bad-behaved here he ended up with a disciplinary suspension). As a result Jones received a default judgement, i.e. the plaintiffs win by default and he doesn't get to argue his case. This also means the plaintiffs get everything they were asking for. And then for some reason he didn't even enter an argument during the damages calculation phase, so the jury just went with whatever the plaintiffs said.
- pippy360 5mo ago
  Do you have a good/entertaining source for this? I'd love to read (or watch/listen) more about it
  - ChristianJacobs 5mo ago
    LegalEagle[0] covered this shitshow in great detail with solid commentary. Can recommend. [0]: https://youtu.be/x-QcbOphxYs https://youtu.be/x-QcbOphxYs This is when from when Jones' lawyer sent a copy of his phone to the opposition...
    - tombert 5mo ago
      That was an impressively stupid and/or lazy fuck up, to a point where I think Jones could have a lawsuit against his attorneys there. IANAL but it does seems like "sending an entire copy of your clients phone and making no effort to redact it" could be a thing that, you know, is bad counsel.
      - gosub100 5mo ago
        No, the lawyers can argue about the scope of what they show the jury during trial. There are plenty of rules against biasing or inflaming the jury with unrelated material.
        5mo ago
jeroenhd 5mo ago
I don't think so. With how much money was made and direct attacks on individual members on the legal system, I think it's a breath of fresh air to see the rich and influential actually get punished. There's frustrating the legal system, and then there's lying under oath and executing smear campaigns against judges. If Alex Jones wanted a smaller settlement, he could've chosen to destroy fewer lies, comply with legal orders, or simply not commit any number of his many other legal infractions. He's desperately trying to weasel his way out of paying any of it back by doing things like moving assets around, leaving companies empty, and then declaring bankruptcy on them. His victims will probably spend the rest of their lives chasing after the compensation they're owed, but perhaps at least taking Jones' branding from him might be punishment for a man like him.
- tt24 5mo ago
  > rich and influential This unidimensional analysis is so funny to me. When your lens forces you to group together Alex Jones, Bill Gates, and George Soros as part of the same “rich and influential” clique, maybe it’s time to reconsider your dimension. Alex Jones is nothing. At best he can be described as a small business owner.
  - DFHippie 5mo ago
    What is your threshold for rich and influential? You don't have to have Musk money to have sufficient pull to escape the consequences most people would face for action X. I don't think this is a difficult or controversial observation. If you're net worth is above $15 million or so in the US, your in the 99th percentile. There are many orders of magnitude between you and Bezos, but you're rich. And if you have a media empire that is watched by millions, you're influential.
  - jeroenhd 5mo ago
    His influence is undeniable. Someone who owns multiple Rolexes is rich in my book. Richer and more influential people existing doesn't change that.
austin-cheney 5mo ago
It is absurdly large and deliberately so. First of all this was a class action suit representing 22 plaintiffs. Secondly, the number was large to punish the defendant for continuously disrespecting the count with bad repeated behavior. Third, there was no defense because the defendant failed to work with the court resulting in a summary judgment.
- SV_BubbleTime 5mo ago
  >deliberately so I’m not entertained that the court is playing an unrealistic and hyberbolic game. I know, I’m a weirdo that wants to see realism and pragmatism in the court systems even if the defendant is a real asshole.
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 5mo ago
    What do you feel would be an outcome to this situation that aligns to the realism and pragmatism you believe the court system should have? All of the threads related to this topic have had a pile of folks going "the amount was too much!" but hardly any of them say what they think an appropriate punishment would look like...
    - declan_roberts 5mo ago
      The "punishment" keeps appearing in this thread and I think that is what explains the eye popping settlement.
    - carlosjobim 5mo ago
      Not the person you asked, but the sensible thing is of course that the court decides the amount - not the plaintiffs. That's how it works in other places. In criminal cases, I've seen victims getting anywhere between 50% to 10% of what they've demanded, or even nothing even when the judgement has been in their favour.
      - sjsdaiuasgdia 5mo ago
noirscape 5mo ago
Besides Jones and his lawyer absolutely botching his defense and basically giving up the case (and pissing off the courts as I understand it, which is a bad fucking idea and usually also leads to larger fines), the $1.4 billion is just what Jones managed to rack it up to before entering bankruptcy proceedings, which froze his debt collectors out for a bit. Alongside the class action, Jones was iirc also facing several separate lawsuits, so what you're seeing here is multiple lost lawsuits (I think he lost 4?) adding up. The bankruptcy also doesn't wipe the slate clean for Jones afaiu, because he specifically was found to be malicious in his behavior. Court debts aren't wiped in that situation. He's still on the hook for that.
- phatfish 5mo ago
  Surely he just waits for the Trump pardon in 2028? Or is this something he can't be pardoned for?
  - cap11235 5mo ago
    It's a civil lawsuit.
  - tombert 5mo ago
    I don't the president can pardon away a lawsuit. He could pardon away a crime, and sometimes the crime can be a basis for a civil lawsuit, but in this case I don't think anyone has seriously considered criminally charging Jones for anything here.
    - mschuster91 5mo ago
      > I don't [think] the president can pardon away a lawsuit. Never underestimate Trump's ability in decreeing something and hoping for it to stick long enough to cause real damage before the courts eventually strike it down - it took almost a year until the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs, by the time the first large corporations get their refunds it will be over a year, and honestly I'd be surprised if the first consumers get refunds by the end of 2026. Trump's ability to do that is solely caused by a lot of people across all branches and levels of government too afraid to say "no" to him and getting on the receiving end of "you're fired".
Zak 5mo ago
Yes, at first. If it was a typical defamation case based on a single incident or short pattern of conduct, and if Jones behaved like a typical defendant, hiring a competent lawyer and mostly complying with court orders, the judgment would have been a few million dollars. That's not what happened. Instead, Jones repeatedly failed to comply with court orders and attempted to delay the trial. He lied under oath, broadcast lies about the plaintiffs, and mocked the plaintiffs on his show after losing a case. He additionally broadcast his intent to continue spreading disinformation about the Sandy Hook shooting. The long-term pattern of treating the court with contempt and clear intent to continue his illegal behavior are an extreme level of noncompliance for a defendant in a lawsuit, and they added up to an extreme penalty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#Sandy_Hook_Elementa...
- declan_roberts 5mo ago
  If he did something criminal then there's a code of law that provides a remedy to that. As far as I know that's not what happened here. Because what he did wasn't criminal, many people wanted a maximal civil settlement in substitution.
  - Zak 5mo ago
    What he did is lose his civil lawsuits about as hard as it's possible to lose, which is easily explained by his behavior during those lawsuits.
sophacles 5mo ago
No, it doesn't seem rather large. The man made a fortune destroying the reputations of some people, and he did so by (provably) intentionally lying about them, without their consent and with nothing paid to them. They deserve every peny of that - he stole their reputations and as with all theft, reparations are logical. In addition he grew his following with those lies, and that following will continue to give him money. This is the interest and dividends of those lies.... it's the result of him investing the reputatoins he destroyed. Since you can't sell a following, but it's still a profit generating asset, it's fair to make Jones turn over those dividends. This ensures that he'll be turning over those dividends for a long time. Finally there's a punative component - making sure he doesn't continue to maliciously destroy reputations for profit. It's a good idea to make sure such a pile of shit thinks twice about he tells more lies to the morons and trash that follow him.
- declan_roberts 5mo ago
  I don't understand. Nothing stopping him from lying publicly about anybody or anything. It's not like he loses his 1st amendment card or something. The only lesson he's learned is to hire a better legal team in the future for civil (not criminal) suits.
  - rootusrootus 5mo ago
    > hire a better legal team Is there any real reason to believe that the problem was his legal teams? You know there were a lot of them, right? Aside from the singular example late in the case, it is plausible that most/all of his legal teams were quite competent.
  - pixl97 5mo ago
    >Nothing stopping him from lying publicly about anybody or anything It's a bit messier than that. For example if he's going to set up a new media empire things like banks will give a pretty big fuck you to loans and such if they think all your assets will be captured by the court and they'll be left holding the bag. This doesn't stop him from putting together money in other ways, but massively increases the difficulty on his part as every time he does he'll find a suit showing up to collect it from him. And as others have said, this has nothing to do with good/bad lawyers. The good lawyers came in at first and told him he was totally screwed, and because he's such a pompous ass he could not handle that.
PunchyHamster 5mo ago
Imagine if you tried to antagonize court at every possible point. Now imagine someone did it worse. It was shit like him saying "noooo I didn't enrich myself, I actually lost money and popularity on site because of it", then court going "okay, could we see your financial records and site visits?" And him just not delivering. Or not showing up at all, multiple times. Also asking for someone to deliver the head of the opposition's lawyer on a pike for a reward(that's not even exaggerating his words). The resulting amount is basically "fuck you", and mostly coz he didn't even showed to defend himself so it wasn't challenged by court
harimau777 5mo ago
The settlement needed to be large enough to stop the behavior. Based on Jones' past behavior, I think it's reasonable to believe that only such a massive settlement would do so. Otherwise, the lawsuit just becomes a cost of doing business.
oo0shiny 5mo ago
I actually made a timeline of his harassment towards the Sandy Hook families, and then his denials of it in court. https://alexjoneslies.com/ https://alexjoneslies.com/
kelvinjps10 5mo ago
For what he did, it seems appropriate, just imagine grieving the death of your children and asshole says it was a hoax and profits from it
flumes_whims_ 5mo ago
IIRC, the judge specifically said the amount was not about harm but specifically about shutting down InfoWars. So, give them such a heavy fine that would be impossible to pay.

Maybe I’m out of touch, but doesn’t a $1.4b dollar settlement for this seem rather… large?

kikokikokiko 5mo ago

[flagged]

BadBadJellyBean 5mo ago
He hurt innocent people with his voice without regrets. He wanted to die on that hill and if so he can be lucky that only his voice might die.
- kikokikokiko 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - LarsKrimi 5mo ago
    What would instead have been a reasonable punishment? Either he truly believed that the kids at Sandy Hook were actors, or he was using it as part of his grift and making money of it. As far as I can tell he has not reversed his stance on it
  - tsimionescu 5mo ago
    He had every possible chance to argue his case, both against culpability and then against the specific damages, but both he and the lawyers he hired refused to do so. This 1.4b dollars was not a particularly harsh judgment coming down from the establishment (note that the establishment is the president Jones was a paid campaign member for), it was the result of his implicit acceptance of every claim the Snady Hook parents made.
- hagbard_c 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - hagbard_c 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - defrost 5mo ago
      As a drive by reader that votes, I can guess why you copped a few whacks; The tone is off and it appears to carry the implication that you might believe that none of the above (Jones, Piker, Owens) should be landed with fines despite on the face of it saying the opposite. A cleaner comment would be better; just explain what it is that Piker has done that is equivilant to Jones' multi decade harrassment of the Sandi Hook parents, ditto Owens. ( for record, I'm non-USAian and unfamiliar with either Piker or Owens )
      - hagbard_c 5mo ago
        It would have been far more interesting to read your reasoning instead of having you click that down-vote button. I don't agree with your reasoning but that is the point: we could discuss it, I could explain who Piker (a left-wing icon being pushed as a 'bro' by the party while he spouts utter tripe and nonsense, calling for murder of political opponents) and Owens (a right-wing podcaster who used to be part of the right-wing establishment until she went fully anti-Semite and general conspiracy theorist). I'm not American either but whatever happens there affects us directly or indirectly so I do keep check on the news from the west.
        defrost 5mo ago
        > It would have been far more interesting to read your reasoning instead of having you click that down-vote button. Ahhh, I read https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments feed and saw your "Can the down-voters for once let go of their pacifiers" which prompted me to look at context. As a general rule I prefer to engage with things I disagree with rather than simply downvote or flag. I note now (I'm GMT +8 and have been asleep since last here) that both your comments above are [flagged] and [dead]. The HN mods, dang and tomhow, really do like to push content, engagement, curious discussion, etc. over snark, partisan whiplash, cranky shit, etc. Re: Piker .. the name came up again in some other context (some speculation about a recent interview in or with the NYT) and so I watched a recent (last 14 days IIRC) interview with him with someone from Mother Jones .. on the bases of that single exposure I personally wouldn't dot point summarise him as "spouting utter tripe and nonsense" - he is capable of debating his opinions, has a good grasp of the political landscape, and is clearly a devisive figure in the US political landscape that would get a lot of hot takes and slanting. Again, I've only a 20 minute exposure, but he does have a good point that he has literally thousands of hours of live twitch streaming, discussion, and in the moment rambling through hypotheticals before landing on a position - ie. he's someone that anyone can build a rolltape of short clips of and easily misrepresent and take out of context. Addendum: from your peer comment: > just like Hasan Piker ('the Jews are behind all it all'), uhh, my take from a 20 minute discussion is that he's strongly against Israel "the aparthied state", the zionist attitude, the current holders of power in Israel. In that he's aligned with, say, the Jewish Council of Australia: https://www.jewishcouncil.com.au/ https://www.jewishcouncil.com.au/
OtherShrezzing 5mo ago
I’m just not sure you can make the claim that this is an issue between the outlet and the establishment. It’s had hosts like Roger Stone doing 5 episodes a week. He’s the former campaign advisor for the sitting president of the United States, and advisor to Dole, Bush (both), and Reagan. It doesn’t get more establishment than that. So the “down and out anti-establishment underdog” narrative doesn’t apply in my opinion.
- pjc50 5mo ago
  To people like that, random college students are "establishment" because they are lefty, and the literal President of the United States is "anti-establishment" because he uses slurs on social media.
pjc50 5mo ago
If people want to get their "hard truths" out, they shouldn't contaminate them with 9/10 parts of lies, and they certainly shouldn't run a harassment campaign against the parents of murdered children. > Infowars delenda est. Yes.
rob74 5mo ago
> 5 will be crazy cucko insane shit, 4 will be common sense american conservative talking points If you ask me, it's getting harder and harder to draw a line between those two categories...

mcdonje 5mo ago

We're not going to have a rehash of the McDonald's coffee settlement argument here, are we? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages

Schiendelman 5mo ago
She deserved way more than that for the way they tried to smear her afterward!
- ziml77 5mo ago
  Seriously, the reporting on that was so terribly biased that many people still think it was a frivolous lawsuit.
  - watwut 5mo ago
    The result was wrong. And yes, I read the contra arguments put on and they were not convincing.
    - Schiendelman 5mo ago
      Your entire opinion is based on an expensive propaganda campaign. Is that who you want to be?
  - dvlsg 5mo ago
    It's honestly kind of chilling just how effective smear campaigns can be. I don't think there's any reasonable person who could read the full medical description of the injuries sustained and think "yeah 2.7 mill was too much".
some_random 5mo ago
Stella Liebeck was awarded 2.7 million in punitive damages, that seems like a much more reasonable number than 1.4 billion.

pie_flavor 5mo ago

The context is that Jones blew up the court process every chance he got, setting a new record for contempt fining. The most important piece was refusing to comply with discovery (his lawyer was so bad-behaved here he ended up with a disciplinary suspension). As a result Jones received a default judgement, i.e. the plaintiffs win by default and he doesn't get to argue his case. This also means the plaintiffs get everything they were asking for. And then for some reason he didn't even enter an argument during the damages calculation phase, so the jury just went with whatever the plaintiffs said.

pippy360 5mo ago
Do you have a good/entertaining source for this? I'd love to read (or watch/listen) more about it
- ChristianJacobs 5mo ago
  LegalEagle[0] covered this shitshow in great detail with solid commentary. Can recommend. [0]: https://youtu.be/x-QcbOphxYs https://youtu.be/x-QcbOphxYs This is when from when Jones' lawyer sent a copy of his phone to the opposition...
  - tombert 5mo ago
    That was an impressively stupid and/or lazy fuck up, to a point where I think Jones could have a lawsuit against his attorneys there. IANAL but it does seems like "sending an entire copy of your clients phone and making no effort to redact it" could be a thing that, you know, is bad counsel.
    - gosub100 5mo ago
      No, the lawyers can argue about the scope of what they show the jury during trial. There are plenty of rules against biasing or inflaming the jury with unrelated material.
      - 5mo ago

jeroenhd 5mo ago

I don't think so. With how much money was made and direct attacks on individual members on the legal system, I think it's a breath of fresh air to see the rich and influential actually get punished. There's frustrating the legal system, and then there's lying under oath and executing smear campaigns against judges. If Alex Jones wanted a smaller settlement, he could've chosen to destroy fewer lies, comply with legal orders, or simply not commit any number of his many other legal infractions. He's desperately trying to weasel his way out of paying any of it back by doing things like moving assets around, leaving companies empty, and then declaring bankruptcy on them. His victims will probably spend the rest of their lives chasing after the compensation they're owed, but perhaps at least taking Jones' branding from him might be punishment for a man like him.

tt24 5mo ago
> rich and influential This unidimensional analysis is so funny to me. When your lens forces you to group together Alex Jones, Bill Gates, and George Soros as part of the same “rich and influential” clique, maybe it’s time to reconsider your dimension. Alex Jones is nothing. At best he can be described as a small business owner.
- DFHippie 5mo ago
  What is your threshold for rich and influential? You don't have to have Musk money to have sufficient pull to escape the consequences most people would face for action X. I don't think this is a difficult or controversial observation. If you're net worth is above $15 million or so in the US, your in the 99th percentile. There are many orders of magnitude between you and Bezos, but you're rich. And if you have a media empire that is watched by millions, you're influential.
- jeroenhd 5mo ago
  His influence is undeniable. Someone who owns multiple Rolexes is rich in my book. Richer and more influential people existing doesn't change that.

austin-cheney 5mo ago

It is absurdly large and deliberately so. First of all this was a class action suit representing 22 plaintiffs. Secondly, the number was large to punish the defendant for continuously disrespecting the count with bad repeated behavior. Third, there was no defense because the defendant failed to work with the court resulting in a summary judgment.

SV_BubbleTime 5mo ago
>deliberately so I’m not entertained that the court is playing an unrealistic and hyberbolic game. I know, I’m a weirdo that wants to see realism and pragmatism in the court systems even if the defendant is a real asshole.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 5mo ago
  What do you feel would be an outcome to this situation that aligns to the realism and pragmatism you believe the court system should have? All of the threads related to this topic have had a pile of folks going "the amount was too much!" but hardly any of them say what they think an appropriate punishment would look like...
  - declan_roberts 5mo ago
    The "punishment" keeps appearing in this thread and I think that is what explains the eye popping settlement.
  - carlosjobim 5mo ago
    Not the person you asked, but the sensible thing is of course that the court decides the amount - not the plaintiffs. That's how it works in other places. In criminal cases, I've seen victims getting anywhere between 50% to 10% of what they've demanded, or even nothing even when the judgement has been in their favour.
    - sjsdaiuasgdia 5mo ago

noirscape 5mo ago

Besides Jones and his lawyer absolutely botching his defense and basically giving up the case (and pissing off the courts as I understand it, which is a bad fucking idea and usually also leads to larger fines), the $1.4 billion is just what Jones managed to rack it up to before entering bankruptcy proceedings, which froze his debt collectors out for a bit. Alongside the class action, Jones was iirc also facing several separate lawsuits, so what you're seeing here is multiple lost lawsuits (I think he lost 4?) adding up. The bankruptcy also doesn't wipe the slate clean for Jones afaiu, because he specifically was found to be malicious in his behavior. Court debts aren't wiped in that situation. He's still on the hook for that.

phatfish 5mo ago
Surely he just waits for the Trump pardon in 2028? Or is this something he can't be pardoned for?
- cap11235 5mo ago
  It's a civil lawsuit.
- tombert 5mo ago
  I don't the president can pardon away a lawsuit. He could pardon away a crime, and sometimes the crime can be a basis for a civil lawsuit, but in this case I don't think anyone has seriously considered criminally charging Jones for anything here.
  - mschuster91 5mo ago
    > I don't [think] the president can pardon away a lawsuit. Never underestimate Trump's ability in decreeing something and hoping for it to stick long enough to cause real damage before the courts eventually strike it down - it took almost a year until the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs, by the time the first large corporations get their refunds it will be over a year, and honestly I'd be surprised if the first consumers get refunds by the end of 2026. Trump's ability to do that is solely caused by a lot of people across all branches and levels of government too afraid to say "no" to him and getting on the receiving end of "you're fired".

Zak 5mo ago

Yes, at first. If it was a typical defamation case based on a single incident or short pattern of conduct, and if Jones behaved like a typical defendant, hiring a competent lawyer and mostly complying with court orders, the judgment would have been a few million dollars. That's not what happened. Instead, Jones repeatedly failed to comply with court orders and attempted to delay the trial. He lied under oath, broadcast lies about the plaintiffs, and mocked the plaintiffs on his show after losing a case. He additionally broadcast his intent to continue spreading disinformation about the Sandy Hook shooting. The long-term pattern of treating the court with contempt and clear intent to continue his illegal behavior are an extreme level of noncompliance for a defendant in a lawsuit, and they added up to an extreme penalty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#Sandy_Hook_Elementa...

declan_roberts 5mo ago
If he did something criminal then there's a code of law that provides a remedy to that. As far as I know that's not what happened here. Because what he did wasn't criminal, many people wanted a maximal civil settlement in substitution.
- Zak 5mo ago
  What he did is lose his civil lawsuits about as hard as it's possible to lose, which is easily explained by his behavior during those lawsuits.

sophacles 5mo ago

No, it doesn't seem rather large. The man made a fortune destroying the reputations of some people, and he did so by (provably) intentionally lying about them, without their consent and with nothing paid to them. They deserve every peny of that - he stole their reputations and as with all theft, reparations are logical. In addition he grew his following with those lies, and that following will continue to give him money. This is the interest and dividends of those lies.... it's the result of him investing the reputatoins he destroyed. Since you can't sell a following, but it's still a profit generating asset, it's fair to make Jones turn over those dividends. This ensures that he'll be turning over those dividends for a long time. Finally there's a punative component - making sure he doesn't continue to maliciously destroy reputations for profit. It's a good idea to make sure such a pile of shit thinks twice about he tells more lies to the morons and trash that follow him.

declan_roberts 5mo ago
I don't understand. Nothing stopping him from lying publicly about anybody or anything. It's not like he loses his 1st amendment card or something. The only lesson he's learned is to hire a better legal team in the future for civil (not criminal) suits.
- rootusrootus 5mo ago
  > hire a better legal team Is there any real reason to believe that the problem was his legal teams? You know there were a lot of them, right? Aside from the singular example late in the case, it is plausible that most/all of his legal teams were quite competent.
- pixl97 5mo ago
  >Nothing stopping him from lying publicly about anybody or anything It's a bit messier than that. For example if he's going to set up a new media empire things like banks will give a pretty big fuck you to loans and such if they think all your assets will be captured by the court and they'll be left holding the bag. This doesn't stop him from putting together money in other ways, but massively increases the difficulty on his part as every time he does he'll find a suit showing up to collect it from him. And as others have said, this has nothing to do with good/bad lawyers. The good lawyers came in at first and told him he was totally screwed, and because he's such a pompous ass he could not handle that.

PunchyHamster 5mo ago

Imagine if you tried to antagonize court at every possible point. Now imagine someone did it worse. It was shit like him saying "noooo I didn't enrich myself, I actually lost money and popularity on site because of it", then court going "okay, could we see your financial records and site visits?" And him just not delivering. Or not showing up at all, multiple times. Also asking for someone to deliver the head of the opposition's lawyer on a pike for a reward(that's not even exaggerating his words). The resulting amount is basically "fuck you", and mostly coz he didn't even showed to defend himself so it wasn't challenged by court

harimau777 5mo ago

The settlement needed to be large enough to stop the behavior. Based on Jones' past behavior, I think it's reasonable to believe that only such a massive settlement would do so. Otherwise, the lawsuit just becomes a cost of doing business.

oo0shiny 5mo ago

I actually made a timeline of his harassment towards the Sandy Hook families, and then his denials of it in court. https://alexjoneslies.com/ https://alexjoneslies.com/

kelvinjps10 5mo ago

For what he did, it seems appropriate, just imagine grieving the death of your children and asshole says it was a hoax and profits from it

flumes_whims_ 5mo ago

IIRC, the judge specifically said the amount was not about harm but specifically about shutting down InfoWars. So, give them such a heavy fine that would be impossible to pay.