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.
> his lawyer was so bad-behaved here he ended up with a disciplinary suspension
Jones had multiple lawyers throughout the process. That was in fact a big part of the problem that ended up getting him defaulted. Free speech systems (his company) do a depo with one set of lawyers that didn't comply comply with the judges orders, they'd go in unprepared and give the "I'm so sorry I'm brand new on this case" and then he'd have a completely different set of lawyers in the next depo that would rinse and recycle the same rhetoric.
It was also 2 cases, one in Texas and the larger one in Connecticut. But he pulled the same shit in both and got defaulted in both.
> the plaintiffs win by default and he doesn't get to argue his case.
The plaintiffs do win by default but he did also get to argue his case still. The trial was focused on how much damage Jones did to the plaintiffs with Jones arguing he did nothing and the plaintiffs showing how crazy it was (Including Jones's fans shooting up his house, getting fired from jobs, having friends accuse them of lying about their kid's deaths).
> 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.
Not really true. He did put forth really bad arguments during the damages calculations. But in both Connecticut and Texas the amount of damage was left up to the Jury to decide. They could have put forward any number from 1 to 80M (I think the highest amount). And in Connecticut the amounts were broken down for each of the victims (including an officer that responded to the shooting). That's part of what's made it impossible for him to unwind because each of the victims got different amounts of damages. There was just like 20 of them which is why the damages went so high.
His lawyers in CT didn't call witnesses but they did cross examine the plaintiffs witnesses. In the TX case they did have AJ take the stand for his own defense, the "Perry Mason" moment was during the cross examination which I'm sure he didn't want to repeat in CT.
That said, his CT lawyer was REALLY bad, far worse than his TX lawyer who famously gave away a copy of his phone by mistake.
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.
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.
It's even worse than that. Because despite his commitment to non-compliance and general contempt for the entire process he managed to comfound his own defense resulting in his legal team accidentally disclosing way too much including the smoking gun that proved his guilt beyond a doubt.
Jones basically handled his defense like Donald Trump handles congressional subpoenas, but Jones doesn't have the Supreme Court covering for him so he got burned to a crisp. I think in his heart of hearts he thought he was going to get some kind of pardon that would make all of the problems go away. He doesn't think he's the kind of person that would ever have to face the consequences of his own actions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jones lawyers were so bad that part of me believes they intentionally sabotaged him. His lawyers (or an assistant on the team) sent an image of his cell phone data to the prosecuting attorneys on accident, which means 2 years of his text messages were used against him. His lawyers could have taken it back but failed. It's insane how this trial went down.
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.
> 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".
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".
It was considerably less on appeal and the mcdonalds lawyers didn't anatagonize the court every chance they got and it was literally 30 years ago and there was only one victim.
Just with inflation (6.4m) and number of victims (22?) you get a much larger number real quick.
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.
> I’m not entertained that the court is playing an unrealistic and hyberbolic game.
They did not. Jones was given years and dozens of opportunities to comply. He defaulted in 2 cases because he failed to comply in both cases. He was also defaulted after being warned he'd be defaulted. The cases literally started in 2018 and resolved in 2022. The reason they dragged out for so long is primarily due to Jones not complying with court orders. Constantly having to retake depositions where the same incomplete and non-compliant answers were given.
And he appealed (and lost) the appeal for the default.
Multiple judges saw his default and concluded "This was a reasonable way to handle an unreasonable litigant".
His lawyers were terrible. Nobody arguing otherwise on that point. Jones wasn't personally directing the legal strategy, he was doing the same thing you'd do.
> Jones wasn't personally directing the legal strategy, he was doing the same thing you'd do.
Yes he was. Jones didn't have 1 set of lawyers from start to finish on the cases. He went through about 20 different lawyers in both cases.
That doesn't happen if a client isn't personally directing the lawyers.
His strategy was very clearly to bring in new lawyers at each depo that didn't comply with the court order. When challenged, the lawyers would say "Oh, sorry, it's my first day on this case. We'll be sure to bring it next time".
He did the same thing with the corporate representatives. He had at least 3 different people show up as the corporate representative that were supposed to bring the finances. None of them complied.
His lawyers were objectively bad. You'd bring in a new team and fire them also.
Example: they sent a copy of his cell phone to the prosecuting attorney on accident and didn't request it back in time, so 2 years of his text messages were used against him.
This is a pragmatic result. The defendant had every opportunity to raise a valid defense. Instead they ignored the court and were a continual harassing ass to the plaintiffs. One way to punish bad behavior is to increase the level of punishment proportional to the harm inflicted.
This punishment reflects not just the conduct at question by the law suit, but also the conduct during the law suit.
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...
I can only speak for myself, but punitive damages of 1-2 million per complainant (22 I think) seems entirely reasonable and in line with previous rulings? But let me also flip the on it's head, if 1.4 billion dollars is an appropriate punishment to you then is there any amount of money that would be too much?
I don't think your values are sufficient deterrent for the kind of behavior Alex Jones and InfoWars exhibited and substantially profited from. They made more than the 22-44 million you're suggesting. They would still have profited from their actions.
I think it needs to be large enough to be a real deterrent. So it needs to be large enough that there is a real risk of turning substantial profit into substantial loss. "What if we get sued for $existentiallyLargeAmount?" needs to be part of the business math when deciding whether to tell lies for profit.
"More money than exists in the world" would clearly be too much. But I'm absolutely fine with a company and its chief officers being left penniless for such behavior. So I'm definitely fine with taking everything the company has, taking everything the chief officers have, and possibly adding a bit of debt on top of that.
So that kinda sums it up then, people who disagree with you (including me) think that the punitive damages should be rooted in punishing Alex Jones et al, not in destroying him forever.
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.
The court does decide, but the plaintiffs are allowed to present their opinion on what it should be and if you manage to screw up your defense enough then the jury gets told to agree with the plaintiff.
This is also the result of multiple lost lawsuits as well as additional penalties from not complying with court directives during the cases.
Yes, I'm aware and I didn't think I had to spell it out: the court should decide the amount according to their own opinion of what is fair, rather than accept a demand from one side.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.