[austin-cheney]

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]

>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.

[cogman10]

> 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".

[declan_roberts]

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.

[cogman10]

> 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.

[declan_roberts]

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.

[cogman10]

That was literally the last lawyer he had which ran the trial (Reynolds).

And the reason his lawyers were so objectively bad was because they all had about 1 month working on the case before getting fired and replaced by a new lawyer.

Meanwhile, the plaintiffs had exactly 1 set of lawyers representing them (1 in TX and one in CT).

I'm not joking when I say that Jones went through about 20 different sets of lawyers throughout the cases. You can listen to his various depositions and there's not a repeat defense lawyer in any one of the depos. I highly doubt they were all just uniquely terrible, especially given how much money Jones has. A few were really terrible (Norm, Barnes). Reynolds was actually one of Jones's better lawyers, he just messed up. Unsurprising given how little time he was on the case.

IIRC, the reason for the phone copy getting shared was because of the case hand-off between reynolds and the previous lawyers. The TX lawyers were CCed when they shouldn't have been. And in the process of getting ready for trial, reynolds missed the email informing him of the mistake.

[pixl97]

>His lawyers were objectively bad.

No, his lawyers were deliberately bad. There is a massive difference.

While no direct evidence, it's almost certain that Jones when to a good lawyer at first who told him that "He was most utterly and unanimously fucked" in which Jones did the you better call Saul and got himself lawyers that would try anything at all to muck up the system. While your first response may be "No bar lawyer would do something that could lose their license", after many years doing computer work in the Texas legal system and seeing myriads of interactions, my response is "Yes they fucking would".

Jones chose poor lawyers because good ones ran away screaming after he told them what he wanted to do.

[austin-cheney]

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.

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

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...

[some_random]

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?

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

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.

[some_random]

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.

[pixl97]

>think that the punitive damages should be rooted in punishing Alex Jones

Correct. This is what happens when you go to court and play by the rules and stop doing things when you get an injunction against said behaviors.

When you tell the court to fuck off and you can do whatever you want, repeatedly, this is when you get the deserved massive punitive smack down for being an anti-social dick.

The problem you have is the complete and total lack of ability to put yourself in the shoes of any of the victims here that had got injunctions from the court many times only to have them be ignored and for have the abuse to then scale up even further. Millions in fines does not solve the behavior, he was making more than that in scamming people. A fine that is lower than profits is just a cost of doing business.

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

If he still profits from the behavior, has he really been punished?

It has to be bigger than what the business can accept as "just a cost of doing business" or it isn't actually a deterrent.

[somebehemoth]

The punishment was made to be a deterrent for all who might consider doing the same as Alex Jones. You have made a straw man about destroying him forever.

[lazide]

The way you leave a company penniless is to fine them and everyone else involved for ‘more money than there is in the world’?

[declan_roberts]

The "punishment" keeps appearing in this thread and I think that is what explains the eye popping settlement.

[carlosjobim]

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.

[wredcoll]

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.

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

You're aware a judge was still involved in the process and agreed to it, right? It's not just the plaintiffs.

[carlosjobim]

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.

[pixl97]

I mean, typically you have the defense and plaintiffs go back and forth on this. Turns out it doesn't pay to be a criminal loser and try to ignore the court.

TL:DR this is never going to be a problem you have, because you'll get a decent lawyer and not be a wildly massive prick about getting your own way.