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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33194 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Alex Jones just lost a lawsuit for defamation for claiming that Sandy Hook was a hoax and the reward was $965bil (after a previous $50mil verdict so its over a billion) for defamation and emotional damages. Jones is a kook, and his claim was both false, and outrageous; but I'm not 100 percent sure he even should have lost. Esp for the emotional damage part. I don't think people should be entitled to damages because they feel hurt by what you say. As far as the defamation part if he claimed particular people created the hoax then I can understand a loss of a defamation lawsuit, but if its just a general comment along the lines of "I think it's a hoax" I don't think he should face any legal penalty for it. And a billion dollars for spouting off some nonsense seems ridiculous to me.

I suspect that he will appeal (I understand he tried to appeal the previous case all the way up to the Supreme Court, who refused to accept the case), and that the case won't be overturned on appeal, but perhaps the damages will be reduced.

There was also some talk about harassment and death threats against people suing Jones. If it can be proven that Jones was behind it I suppose that could be ground for a lawsuit (and perhaps even criminal charges depending on the details), but that would be a separate issue than defamation or emotional distress over the original comment.

I haven't been following this, because it's a horrible mess and if the parents of the dead kids cornered Jones in a dark alley and kicked the crap out of him I wouldn't find it hard to be sympathetic even though really we shouldn't be kicking the crap out of people, but by osmosis what I'm getting is that it went beyond 'hurt feelings'.

People who believed Jones were harassing the parents, claiming they were all actors; I think one guy tried to dig up the grave of one of the dead children to prove it was empty, and so on. Sure, saying your child is not dead because they never existed and you are a liar and/or a professional actor hired to pretend to be a bereaved parent may not cause physical damage, but this is one of the few categories that I do think emotional damage counts as a real injury.

I'm with you on the lack of sympathy. I have been fighting with people I know who follow Alex Jones for years because of the silly things they come to believe because of things he says.

Nearly $1B smacks of this being a political decision, to me personally. I want someone to develop a principle or rule that could be evenly applied that fits this judgement against Jones and sets up guidelines for the future, because right now it seems more like Bad Man Get Punished, Yay!

A good take I heard was that Infowars promoted its self as a news/genuine information outlet and used that outlet to spread false information. Maybe if you represent yourself as a news outlet, you should be held to different standards. I don't follow other news outlets because I can't take the punishment, but if the NYTimes, CNN, FOX, MSNBC news divisions started engaging in spreading false information parading as facts, they would then be liable under this principle. Would they be liable in a lawsuit by Kyle Rittenhouse in this case?

Esp for the emotional damage part. I don't think people should be entitled to damages because they feel hurt by what you say

IIED is not just "my feelings got hurt." There are four elements and that is just one of them.

I dunno, setting aside the litigation specifics (the stuff about this being the product of a default judgment due to his refusal to comply with discovery requests etc.) I don't really have any objections. He dragged individual families who were not public figures through the mud in front of a massive audience, accusing them of lying about the deaths of their own children, in pursuit of some flagrantly delusional claims. Seriously messed up behavior and he deserves what he's getting. Yes the specific figure the jury came up with is disproportionate, but juries often do that when there's a sympathetic plaintiff, which is why even Antonin Scalia agreed with a substantive due process right of defendants to have judges knock excessive jury awards back down to the realm of reason, as will likely happen here too if Jones doesn't shit the bed again with his appeal. If the figure was awarded directly by a judge, I guess he's SOL subject to bankruptcy protections, but that's what you get for horribly and specifically defaming a huge group of innocent private families for years on end in front of a bizarrely large audience. Don't do that!

I was glad when the kid in Smirkgate was able (presumably) to drag cash out of the media organizations who defamed him during the summer fever dream of 2020, and I likewise don't feel bad for Jones here. Defamation has always been an exception to the first amendment, and unlike other putative exceptions for hate speech and the like I don't think it poses any kind of systemic risk to the right to voice opinions and ideas in public.

Smirkgate kid got all his cases dismissed for being "objectively unverifiable" so the media's response was just non-actionable opinions. Which means they're broad or vague enough that you can't objectively say they're false. Though he did settle with CNN and The Washington Post before the trial was dismissed so he got something.

Other kids at the school trying to file a suit pseudonymously had their case thrown out for being pseudonymous but it was also stated that it would have been dismissed anyway because of the same reason as above.

Smirkgate kid got all his cases dismissed for being "objectively unverifiable" so the media's response was just non-actionable opinions. Which means they're broad or vague enough that you can't objectively say they're false. Though he did settle with CNN and The Washington Post before the trial was dismissed so he got something.

Source? This is internally inconsistent. Yes, CNN and WaPo settled--which means, they gave Nick some substantial amount of money, amount not publicly known. They would not have done so if his cases were dismissible.

https://www.businessinsider.com/covington-kid-nicholas-sandmann-loses-lawsuits-against-abc-nyt-others-2022-7

Assuming that the judge's dismissal holds up on appeal, it sounds like either CNN and WaPo's coverage was meaningfully different from the other media defendants, or that their legal counsel screwed up in a big way approving unnecessary settlements. No competent attorney will settle for any amount of money if he can 12(b)(6) before discovery and be done.

which means, they gave Nick some substantial amount of money, amount not publicly known

Source? This is internally inconsistent. How can it be known that they gave him substantial amounts of money when the terms of the settlement are secret?

Because settlements are agreed to by both parties--a compromise. There would be no point for Nick and his attorneys to agree to a trivial settlement when they could go to trial instead and potentially win big. If the case was easily dismissible, CNN and WaPo would not have settled for any amount; they would have just filed a motion to dismiss and moved on.

Nick undoubtedly got a fair bit less than he was suing for, but still a substantial amount of money. That's how settlements work.

There would be no point for Nick and his attorneys to agree to a trivial settlement when they could go to trial instead and potentially win big.

Plural's contention was that there was in fact almost no potential to win big, so the settlement may very well have been trivial.

That wasn't my contention that was the judge's contention when he struck the suit. WaPo and CNN settled the case last year. The rest of his cases were struck down by a judge a few months ago, I assumed people here would've been aware of that. I saw it Deadline with all the comments celebrating that the racists lost. I guess if no one makes a top level post about it here it might as well never have happened.

Your line of reasoning also assumes that each media outlet had the exact same level of potential culpability which would be impossible unless they all posted the same articles and made the same tweets. It's possible CNN and WaPo settled because they thought the cases against them were strong and the other outlets didn't settle because the cases against them were weaker.

"Substantial" is probably low six figures. Once he had enough of a case to get to discovery, CNN and WaPo are interested in it going away even with a very high likelihood of success on their part. He certainly was not wearing a "I am a multi-millionaire" suit in his appearance during the RNC.

I've said it before, it's kind of the same thing as what happened with LeafyIsHere. You're always playing with fire whenever you're calling attention to someone specifically. You can either leave out names or be very specifically vigilant about trying to keep people from "tapping the glass," as Fredrik Knudsen might put it.

Jones spent years scapegoating these families. Claiming they lied, that their children were fine. He combed over footage of grieving parents pointing out “acting.” This was broadcast to an enormous and enthusiastic audience, some of whom proceeded to threaten these Deep State shills.

It was a clear case of “communicating to a third party false statements about a person that result in damage to that person's reputation,” or defamation. Whether or not you think the corresponding legal penalties are appropriate, he has no defense.

If people were pissing on the grave of my murdered son, threatening to dig up an “empty” coffin, I think I’d have objections to the guy selling that narrative.

This makes me wonder if any Holocaust deniers ever been sued for this. Much less ordered to pay a billion dollars? This isn't a snarky rhetorical question--it seems like it would fit a very similar set of criteria to what you are describing here and I don't know the answer. The Holocaust was certainly worse than Sandy Hook, so I would think Jones's punishment would be less.

Holocaust deniers rarely accuse particular persons of lying. That was what exposed Jones to liability. The right to generally lie about history, or about anything, is well established in US law if it is not both knowing or reckless and causes harm. "Absent from those few categories where the law allows content-based regulation of speech is any general exception to the First Amendment for false statements. . . . These quotations [inplying less protection for falsehood] all derive from cases discussing defamation, fraud, or some other legally cognizable harm associated with a false statement, such as an invasion of privacy or the costs of vexatious litigation. . . . Even when considering some instances of defamation and fraud, moreover, the Court has been careful to instruct that falsity alone may not suffice to bring the speech outside the First Amendment. The statement must be a knowing or reckless falsehood. " United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709 (2012)

And, hurt feelings from disagreement with the content of the speech is not enough harm to remove the speech from constitutional protection. "Our fighting words cases have made clear, however, that such generalized reactions are not sufficient to strip expression of its constitutional protection. The mere fact that expressive activity causes hurt feelings, offense, or resentment does not render the expression unprotected." RAV v. St. Paul, 505 US 377, 414 (1992) [Overturning cross burning statute}. See also Virginia v. Black, 538 US 343 (2003) [Upholding conviction for cross burning done on the lawn of a black family with intent to intimidate, but overturning conviction for cross burning at Klan rally under statute that made the burning of a cross prima facie evidence of intent to intimidate]. And of course there was the famous Skokie case

In the mid-90s, David Irving tried to sue an author for libel after she wrote that he was "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial." His suit was shot down since she was able to provide proof of his garbage scholarship.

A better example might be the Mermelstein suit, in which a Holocaust survivor sues the premier revisionist organization for breach of contract. In that case, the plaintiff got the promised $50k prize, plus a similar amount in damages. But it was the early 80s, and the IHR hadn't engaged in actual defamation (yet).

How would bad scholarship be relevant to him being a dangerous spokesperson for Holocaust denial?

Irving is one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial. Familiar with historical evidence, he bends it until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda. A man who is convinced that Britain's great decline was accelerated by its decision to go to war with Germany, he is most facile at taking accurate information and shaping it to confirm his conclusions. A review of his recent book, Churchill's War, which appeared in New York Review of Books, accurately analyzed his practice of applying a double standard of evidence. He demands "absolute documentary proof" when it comes to proving the Germans guilty, but he relies on highly circumstantial evidence to condemn the Allies. This is an accurate description not only of Irving's tactics, but of those of deniers in general.

The first bit was just my choice to show relevance to the OP. She had more scholarly criticism elsewhere.

I don't understand. You said that his suit was shot down because she was able to provide proof of garbage scholarship. Is your assumption then that if Irving had ironclad proof that the Holocaust did not happen he would be considered less of a 'dangerous' holocaust denier?

There was more than one point of contention.

Finding instances where he used fake sources defended her claims that he was bending the truth. Claiming that he was a Hitler fanboy and Holocaust denier was pretty easy. I believe the defense for calling him dangerous was his association with violent neo-Nazi groups.

But I suppose you’re welcome to check the actual judgment. Paragraphs 2.10 and 2.15 had the specific claims.

You're not answering the point relevant to what you yourself wrote. You said that his suit was shot down because she was able to provide proof of garbage scholarship. Is your assumption then that if Irving had ironclad proof that the Holocaust did not happen he would be considered less of a 'dangerous' holocaust denier?

I fail to see what light the court judgment would shed on your own statements.

More comments

Yes, they have. Almost exclusively in Europe but now in Canada as well since Holocaust denial was outlawed just this year. This lawsuit may portend the beginning of similar lawsuits against Holocaust deniers in the United States.

This is my biggest concern from the Jones trial. The billion in damages potentially anchors future juries and courts on what is essentially a political reprisal. In a world where a billion in damages is considered justice, it's easy to image a world were a million dollar in damages is demanded from a Holocaust denier.

Probably the most relevant example is the various organizations and individual literary scholars who have questioned the authenticity of the Anne Frank diaries - many have been successfully sued by Otto Frank and the Anne Frank House for defamation abroad.

Historically, in the United States, Revisionists have been able to get away with questioning the authenticity of the Anne Frank diaries. But with a billion in damages against Jones, it won't be surprising to see the Holocaust industry emboldened to bring civil lawsuits against Holocaust deniers for questioning the Anne Frank story.

It so happens that in August, Revisionists published another work on the Anne Frank diaries which I am reading now. Maybe I'll write a review, it's an interesting controversy.

It wouldn't surprise me if in the future we see lawsuits against Revisionists.

As for me, I would certainly satisfy the standards of @KnotGoel (if I had reach). There are famous survivors and witnesses I would call major liars - like Irene Zisblatt who featured prominently in Steven Spielberg's film The Last Days.

There is no way in 1000 years that someone can be successfully sued in the US for simply claiming that the Ann Frank diaries are not authentic, unless they target a particular person and claim that he or she faked them. And even then, any damages that person would suffer would be likely be relatively low.

Of course, if someone aids and abets a campaign of harassment against that person, that would be a different matter. But that is what takes it out of the realm of mere advocacy of an idea (the Holocaust didn't happen; the diary is fake; Sandy Hook was a hoax), which is protected speech, and into the realm of defamation or another tort.

Of course, if someone aids and abets a campaign of harassment against that person

What would this consist of, exactly? I think this is the area most ripe for attack. Under the theory of stocahastic terrorism, public criticism itself, however valid, could certainly be considered "aiding and abetting a campaign of public harassment."

There is no way in 1000 years that someone can be successfully sued in the US for simply claiming that the Ann Frank diaries are not authentic, unless they target a particular person and claim that he or she faked them.

"Defamation" (stating insufficiently contexualized facts) of a person dead for more than a millenium, is illegal in Austria.

  1. That is not a defamation case. It is a hate speech case.

  2. I specifically said "in the US."

  3. US courts will not enforce a foreign judgment imposing liability for speech protected in the US

$1 billion is enough so silence anyone , save for a multi-billionaire or a media conglomerate.

had enough reach that those victims received threats from other people

But the threats don't have to have anything to do with the reach. Everything Alex Jones said about Sandy Hook came long after it was mainstream in conspiracy theory circles. The idea that those involved were actors didn't catch on because of Jones. It caught on because of that one Robbie Parker video from the day after the shooting where he comes across as suspicious, which has been incessently posted on /pol/ since it came out and supplemented with various additional coincidences. 4plebs doesn't go all the way back to the shooting but you can see the discussion back in December 2013:

http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/search/text/robbie%20parker/order/asc/page/1/

Meanwhile Alex Jones was claiming that the shooting happened but was a false-flag orchestated by the government. If we go by this Media Matters page he didn't start parroting the "actors" thing until 2014. It's hard to judge since obviously I obviously don't watch him myself but it doesn't even look like he talked about it much, the grassroots conspiracy-theorist interest was much greater. But nonetheless the legal system blames him for other conspiracy theorists because they share the same beliefs, without proving that he caused those beliefs.

Some guy in an online conspiracy theory site talking to a couple hundred like-minded zealots about how you are an actor and your alleged child never existed so couldn't have been shot is harmful, but if you never hear about it and none of the zealots try tracking you down, it's small harm.

Some guy with a radio show broadcast nationally, who has been sued several times for repeating these theories, and refuses to shut up but keeps going on about it, is a different matter.

"On April 16, 2018, Neil Heslin, father of victim Jesse Lewis, filed a defamation suit against Jones, Infowars and Free Speech Systems in Travis County, Texas. Later that day, Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, parents of victim Noah Pozner, filed a defamation suit against them as well. Pozner, who has been forced to move several times to avoid harassment and death threats, was accused by Jones of being a crisis actor. Jones was found to be in contempt of court even before the trial started, failing to produce witnesses and materials relevant to the procedures. Consequently, Jones and Infowars were fined a total of $126,000 in October and December 2019."

If it is true that someone had to move several times because Jones fans/believers were harassing him, then Jones is responsible for not shutting the hell up.

but if you never hear about it and none of the zealots try tracking you down, it's small harm.

I'm not sure this is necessarily obvious. Can you really be harmed if you don't realize it?

If the victim feels no distress, what actually determines if someone has been harmed?

Except that the complaint alleged that it was all about the reach -- ie, that it was him, and not whatever else was going on in conspiracy theory circles, which caused the harm to the plaintiffs. Since he managed to fuck up his way to a default judgment, the allegations of the complaint were taken as true. So, those are the facts (or, if you prefer,, "facts") that were the basis of the damages.

I'm not sure how relevant that is. Whether those claims had been made before or not, Jones was still making those claims, and he brought them to vast new audiences that would not have been reached if they had just circulated among 4chan anons (a group that is harder to bring to court for defamation for reasons that should be obvious).

brought them to vast new audiences

Did he? How many people watch Alex Jones but aren't familiar enough with the conspiracy-theory community to have encountered an extremely popular conspiracy theory? And of course the grassroots conspiracy theorists had a lot more detail and arguments too, unlike Alex Jones vaguely referencing the claims that were already widespread. For that matter the first page of that 4plebs search in 2013 has a screenshot of Robbie Parker's former phone number, certainly not something Alex Jones shared and from before he even started referencing "actors". We hardly need Alex Jones to explain why he got harassing phone calls. Even if there's a significant audience of casual conspiracy-theorists who watch Alex Jones but aren't in contact with the rest of the conspiracy theory community, it seems like those would be the least likely to act on that information.

From what I can tell the modern conspiracy-theorist community is fundamentally very grassroots, a distributed effort to accumulate the sort of seemingly-convincing evidence and arguments described in The Pyramid and the Garden. Not that non-conspiracy-theorists are immune to this, most of them will accept similarly bad evidence under other circumstances, they're usually just using heuristics like "reject things called conspiracy theories by mainstream sources" which fail as soon as something true is called a conspiracy theory or a false conspiracy theory is treated seriously by the mainstream. E.g. I remember people on 4chan sometimes thinking posts they didn't like were "bots" even when this was technologically very implausible, and then years later I saw the habit of accusing opposing posters of being "Russian bots" on sites like Twitter and Reddit go mainstream. (Complete with popular ideas like "You can tell they're Russian bots because their usernames end with 8 numbers on Twitter" - of course the actual reason is because that's Twitter's format for suggested usernames.) Anyway, maybe the conspiracy-theorist community used to be more centralized but nowadays very few conspiracy theories originate or are even popularized by some identifiable leader, they're just networks of people who combine the same mistakes in reasoning most people make with a distrust of official sources.

a group that is harder to bring to court for defamation for reasons that should be obvious

Right. But it doesn't seem like you should get to legally treat the guy who happens to be the most prominent conspiracy-theorist as a scapegoat just because there's nobody else to sue. Defamation law doesn't have a mechanism to crack down on communities of people with mistaken ideas, and rightly so.

Yes to all this, but it's also important to mention that he lost by default because being an obstinate litigant and refusing to comply with discovery orders was his entire MO. We'll see how the collection and bankruptcy after-action ultimately play out, but I can't imagine anyone thinking this ever had a chance of working in his favor. MAYBE his efforts (setting aside their morality/legality) helped him shield some of his assets, but that was in exchange for abandoning the field to swallow the default judgment poison pill. Moreover, this also means that he had to functionally abandon any actually real defenses, such as anything remotely grounded in free speech protections. I would love to see an earnest steelman of why his cases sets a bad precedent, but as far as I can tell it largely falls along tribal lines.

If he thinks he cannot win, it probably does not help to aggressively fight it because that would cost him $ that would otherwise go to paying the judgement. It would also add to the plaintiff's legal bills (a default judgement is a lot cheaper than a long legal battle). A successful defense in a libel case would be to show that the Sandy Hook victims were in fact crisis actors or that no reasonable person would believe him (satire defense). The $1 billion seems arbitrarily and excessively punitive if you include medical bills and lost wages for every family member, which cannot possibly be anywhere close to $1 billion. It sets a precedent that anyone who is sufficiently and convincingly traumatized by speech can be awarded an arbitrarily large amount of money.

The $1 billion seems arbitrarily and excessively punitive if you include medical bills and lost wages for every family member, which cannot possibly be anywhere close to $1 billion.

But, damages for defamation have always included far more than medical bills and lost wages. 3 Restatement of Torts § 621, Comment a (1938) ("It is not necessary for the plaintiff [who is seeking general damages in an action for defamation] to prove any specific harm to his reputation or any other loss caused thereby"). And, damages for emotional distress are normal, not just in defamation cases, but in all intentional tort cases, if the defendant's behavior is egregious enough. See, eg, Molien v. Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, 27 Cal.3d 916, 927 (1980) ["intentional torts will support an award of damages for emotional distress alone, but only in cases involving 'extreme and outrageous intentional invasions of one's mental and emotional tranquility.'"].

It sets a precedent that anyone who is sufficiently and convincingly traumatized by speech can be awarded an arbitrarily large amount of money.

No, it doesn't, not unless 1) the award is not reduced by the court upon entry of judgment, which happens all the time; and 2) the award was actually arbitrary. You seem to assume that "large" = "arbitrary." But, without looking at the actual evidence before the jury, there is no way to determine whether it was arbitrary or not. The fact that the amount awarded to each plaintiff varied from 28 million to 120 million, is at least some evidence that the jury did not act arbitrarily.

Finally, it does not remotely create a precedent that anyone "traumatized by speech" can be awarded any compensation at all; rather it is merely the latest in 200+ years of precedent holding that someone harmed by** unprotected **speech, of which defamation is an obvious example, can be compensated.

You're incomplete. It this sets any precedent it's "anyone who is sufficiently and convincingly traumatized by speech can be awarded an arbitrarily large amount of money...provided they face a defendant who 100% gives up any semblance of legal defense and instead spends enormous resources trying to shield from liability as much of his multi-million dollar commercial enterprise as possible, by ineffectively trying to distribute it to family members and other antics."

The precedent it sets isn't a legal one, but a practical one. If you're on the right, you can be destroyed for any reason and the legal system will bend over backwards to do it. Your motions will be summarily denied and your appeals unheard. You will be denied your day in court based on procedural gotchas, your lawyers will be sanctioned for defending you, and you will be penalized well beyond your ability to withstand.

I thought we were talking about Alex Jones? I have no idea what your hypothetical has to do with his cases.

The take I'm seeing is that this is moreso the fault of Jones and his lawyers rather than the actual reprehensibleness (or lack thereof) of his speech. Specifically, this verdict was a default judgment and only happened after Jones missed scheduled court dates, refused to comply with the discovery process, and his attorney simply didn't present any sort of First Amendment defense at all. (And that's not even covering the lawyer sending his text messages, allegedly on accident, to the opponent's lawyer, nor the failure of them to identify it as protected or privileged communication.)

Now, I don't know if that's accurate, but if true then it means free speech isn't legally in danger. Probably.

A defendant and his lawyers refusing to comply with the process looks rather similar to the court playing calvinball with him to make sure he loses. Jones didn't hire fly-by-night incompetents to defend him.

If this is true, we should see many more such default judgements against political defendants going forward. I suspect we will not. Does this board include a remind me feature?

They don't need to go that far; the chilling effect will work wonders.

I am kind of worried about exactly how we should hold someone responsible for enabling other lunatics and worried that Jones is a particularly bad test case to decide it.

But if Jones does not give enough of a shit to show up to court, I do not see why I should give a shit about him, either. Asking me to care more than the subject is ripe for abuse.

Why the new top level? The previous hasn't fallen below the default cut-off yet.

I hate these huge judgements. Justice can still be served without having to destroy someone's career which otherwise should be protected by the 1st amendment. Did these survivors and victims really experience $1 billion worth of trauma? At what point does justice cross into thirst for revenge? I hope Alex Jones fights this successfully to get it reduced to something that will not totally ruin him, not even because I agree with him, but this has a chilling effect on anyone whose career involves speech.

I wish there were some way to remove enough from large defenders to make their bad decisions hurt, but not give a windfall to victims far in excess of even the most generous view of the harms.

McDonalds really should lose a significant multiple of their annual coffee profits for keeping their coffee too hot to drink for years to reduce waste, but that doesn't mean that it's right for the burn victims and their attorneys to get several years worth of coffee profits, either.

But that's the mechanism to get people to invest time and effort in these lawsuits. For individual cases, giving the lawyers a shot at a huge payoff is what enables them to fight big companies with lots of resources to spend on defense. And in class action cases, especially those where most of the class members end up with $20 gift cards or a year of credit monitoring, most of the money goes from the defendant to the people who did all of the work putting together the case.

I don't mind a reward even a share of the punitive damages. I just wish it were smaller. I think punitive damages should be sized to harm defendants who deserve getting a huge judgement, I just don't like all of it going to plaintiffs whose harms are far smaller.

So when Weyland-Yutani kills a crew through extreme gross negligence l'd like them to eat a billion dollar fine. But I want the crews estates and attorneys to get damages and costs plus something more like 50 or 100 million enough to provide a good return on the suit but not all of the fine amount, then I want the rest of the money to disappear.

I do not think Gibson bakery suffered $36 million worth of damages. The NPV of their entire future line of business to the end of time could not possibly be that. But I am glad the jury made sure to stick it in Oberlin's eye.

I think the financial incentives here are actually the problem. Alex Jones probably wouldn't bother to say the horrible things he does if he couldn't make money off of it. This sort of court case helps to neutralize that perverse incentive a bit, even though it doesn't go nearly far enough to stop that bad business completely.

He can't really fight. The US Supreme Court already turned him down without comment in the Texas case, and the Connecticut Supreme Court has shot down all his motions pretty quickly. If he actually wants to appeal he'd need to post an appeal bond, and the amount of the bond is likely to be very large so he won't be able to post it. (also, I'm not sure default judgements are appealable in CT.). If he were allowed to appeal the appeal would go nowhere, as there's nothing to base it on as there was no trial in the first place. So the next step is collecting the judgement, which will put him in bankruptcy court, where the usual bankruptcy protections (e.g. homestead exemption) will mysteriously be mostly inapplicable to him.

At what point does justice cross into thirst for revenge?

Justice is the formalized, civilized version of the impulse for revenge. Jones goes to court instead of being paraded around the streets of Hartford on a rail.

Well, justice is also about coordinating social denunciation, reducing the ability of a criminal to continue his crimes, deterring future crimes by others, providing reparation to victims of crimes, giving criminals an opportunity for expiation so society will reaccept them, giving criminals an opportunity for reform so they can reintegrate with society ... in theory, anyway; I've tried to sort the list above by decreasing order of likelihood / increasing order of hopelessness.

But yeah, formalizing revenge is huge. Let a victim's family or friends take revenge and they're almost certain to go too far, and even if they don't you can bet the perpetrator's family will think they did, and that means it's time for counter-revenge, and maybe this is comedic if you're looking at the Hatfields and McCoys from a century and a half remove but it's horrifying if you're looking at them (or the Crips and the Bloods, whatever) in the moment. If the State takes revenge you get a nice Schelling point for "this is done now" plus a decent incentive not to take further revenge or counter-revenge even if you disagree.

reducing the ability of a criminal to continue his crimes, deterring future crimes by others

And revenge is the instinctive drive to accomplish those present in all primates at least.

should otherwise be protected by the 1st amendment

Where does the 1st come into this? Rather, how does the amount of a judgment make it more or less relevant?

I don't think anyone's claim to emotional trauma should be sufficient to ruin someone's career, which should have 1st Amendment protections. How much responsibility does Alex Jones have over how his listeners respond to one of his conspiracy theories? What if 911 victims and survivors felt traumatized, should they also get a share of his income? You put some guy on the stand who he alleges was traumatized despite no laws having been broken and the jury will eat it up.

despite no laws being broken

That's the sticking point. Defamation laws are on the books, and Jones' conduct was squarely in their domain. If the families of 9/11 victims could point to the same sort of damages, emotional or otherwise, caused by Infowars targeting them specifically--then yes, they should probably get to sue him.

I'm asking why the 1st amendment should protect careers from private individuals' civil suits.

I don't think anyone's claim to emotional trauma should be sufficient to ruin someone's career, which should have 1st Amendment protections. How much responsibility does Alex Jones have over how his listeners respond to one of his conspiracy theories?

Isn't this the "no right to yell 'fire' in a crowded theatre" exception? "I'm telling you, my audience, that those alleged dead kids never existed" "I'm gonna prove Alex is right by grabbing my shovel and digging up that empty grave" - there is a definite connection there. Jones may claim that he never explicitly said the graves were empty or asked, encouraged, or hinted his audience should go digging up graves, but Y would not have happened without X.

Isn't this the "no right to yell 'fire' in a crowded theatre" exception?

I don't think that's a thing any-more....

Those are really good arguments that Jones should have made in court.

What if 911 victims and survivors felt traumatized

They'd have to go to the effort to actually make out a defamation claim. I don't think you have any familiarity with the specificity and depravity of Jones' years-long campaign against these individuals if you think 9/11 trutherism is an apt comparison.

The Supreme Court has decided that false claims that cause harm to other people are not protected by the First Amendment. Sure, sometimes it's hard to discern whether or not a claim is true, and it's fair to say courts should avoid intervening in those cases. But in this case, the claims were egregious, obvious lies that caused people to have to flee their homes multiple times for their own personal safety. What would be the public benefit in protecting such speech?

What would be the public benefit in protecting such speech?

The public benefit is that having people like Alex Jones active in media space makes it harder for the government (or private entities for that matter) to state fake tragedies. I can sleep easy knowing that Sandy Hook was real, because if there was good evidence it was fake Alex Jones would have found it.

This is an interesting argument. But what I wonder is can there be "professional conspiracy theorists" in the ilk of Alex Jones who would perform due diligence in finding potential fake tragedies if they didn't have to publish these egregiously false reports. In this case, Alex Jones did some level of research on the topic (how much real research I have no idea), but then reported obviously false claims and really did do massive harm to the victims of an already grieving family.

In an attempt to have the cake of your argument and eat it too. Alex (or others of his kind) would need to do this verification research, but not publish unless they find real evidence. But my understanding is that these Alex-like people get most of their income by being loud and boisterous, so idk if they could substantiate good evidence without parading around the falsities like Alex did in this case.

And moreover, I'm curious if you (or anyone else here) can think of an example where a conspiracy theorist in this modern internet age has actually uncovered a real faked tragedy before. Cause if Alex and his ilk are 0/n on cases. It doesn't really prove their track record, and the cost of their proceeding wouldn't be worth the peace of mind that your outlining here.

If he'd gone after 9/11 cops the way he went after Sandy Hook families he'd be dead by now. He chose his victims wisely.

Did some notable 9/11 truthers get murdered? Is this alluding to something specific?

9/11 truthers tend to (but don't always) avoid saying something as antagonistic as 'hey nyc cops, your buddies didn't die in 9/11, they were crisis actors, you're an actor' etc. I would expect someone as high profile as Jones doing it to get Dorner'd.

Am I once again missing something here? What do you mean by getting "Dorner'd"? Perhaps he was wrongfully fired, but my recollection was he then went on a killing spree and committed suicide. How is that analogous to getting assassinated for conspiracy theories?

Dorner believed he was in that movie the negotiatior, or maybe serpico - either way he wrote a manifesto accusing the la police department of rampant corruption, and then targeted police in his attacks, so dornering is shooting cops because you believe a crazy conspiracy based on mostly crazy (but some decent) evidence.

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Same as with Gawker, the concern is using massive judgements to financially ruin someone such that they are effectively silenced by being unable to afford to publish.

The important difference is that Gawker was punished for saying true things about powerful people that they wanted to keep secret (the real crime was outing Peter Thiel as gay, the pretext was invading Hulk Hogan's privacy by publishing a sex tape) whereas Alex Jones is being punished for telling lies about ordinary people who happened to become newsworthy because they were involved in a tragedy.

Whatever you think about the wisdom of giving human governments this power, God convicts Alex Jones and acquits Gawker.

No, Gawker was a gossip rag, and they thought they could get away with it because they were well-connected in the media scene. They published the sex tape because why the fuck not, let's have our sophisticated and jaded audience laugh at the likes of an idiot lower-class guy like Hogan who is a celebrity for the exact kind of people we despise.

They believed they had power, so that they could twit the likes of Thiel, and then they found out that no, they didn't have power. They were no loss and they brought it upon themselves - ironically, with the same kind of stubborn disregard that Jones exhibited by not shutting up after the various lawsuits against him.

"Ha ha, I am a witty upper middle-class urbanite working in an atmosphere of cynical deprecation, so I can joke about four year olds and sex - oops, what do you mean ordinary people think someone who does that is a shit head?"

If I take and publish an upskirt photo of AOC, would you classify that as "saying true things about powerful people"?

Large damages are often reduced, and perhaps what Jones said should be protected speech, or perhaps emotional damages should never be recoverable. But if you are going to make the claim, you probably should look into what actually happened, because you seem to be very much understating both what Jones did and the emotional suffering experienced by the plaintiffs, both of which were way beyond the bar normally needed to recover for emotional damages for defamation in the US.

I think it should be covered under the same parody laws that protected Hustler when they got sued after claiming Falwell lost his virginity with his mom.

Jones is a clown no one should be taking him seriously. Just like Stern and Opie and Anthony and all the other shock jocks who do wild and stupid stuff designed to generate an emotional response for entertainment.

I'm going to guess there's no serious expectation that anyone reading the Hustler story about Falwell having sex with his mom believed this actually reflected reality, that it was a journalistic effort to uncover Falwell's legacy of incest that actually happened. I'm also going to guess that there is a serious expectation that people who listened to Jones claiming that Sandy Hook parents were crisis actors would seriously believe that this indeed reflected reality, that the supposed parents were really a part of some grand conspiracy.

Yes, and note that the Hustler fake ad included the statement: "ad parody — not to be taken seriously."

No should listen to Alex Jones and seriously believe his statements are news, any more than Homer is representing a true history of Odeseus' voyage home or the Aneid is the history of how Rome was founded. It's entertainment for people who want their stories to be larger than life.

Then he doesn't get to have it both ways - just like Jon Stewart and 'Clown Nose On, Clown Nose Off'. You can't claim to be telling the truth about what is really going on, the truth that the powerful don't want you to know, then claim "oh no, I'm only a comedian and this is an entertainment show, not a news show, nobody is meant to believe the stories" when it suits you.

'The Lizard People run the world from their secret Moon base that was built by the Nazis' is an entertainment story. 'This shooting never happened, there were no dead children and the people claiming to be their parents are all actors' is not.

What if the entertaining aspect is exaggerating and dramatizing the news until it becomes absurd? I think there should be room for that in the 1st.

Pollution is wrecking frog DNA enough to alter secondary sex characteristics as serious news, expressed as the absurd, the powers that be are so evil they turn frogs gay simply for their twisted delight is an absurd exaggeration, to use a less controversial examples.

Did he even make that defense in court? If not, he has only himself to blame. But I doubt it would fly anyway; I've seen no indication that he doesn't believe all the twisted clown-car shit that he says.

He didn't make any defense in court, his case was decided without a trial, because the judge didn't like how he was complying with discovery.

He wasn't allowed to present any defense in court, since a default judgement was entered against him.

That's not true.

Jones spent years, starting from May 2018, stalling on discovery. Eventually, the judge called it quits and entered that default judgment, at which point they moved on to a jury trial for damages.

He decided not to present any defense, apparently because guilt in the default judgment meant the judge denied his usual strategy of shouting "I'M INNOCENT" over and over.

Jones’ own lawyers had earlier indicated they would have him testify again Wednesday to bolster his arguments that the damages awarded to the plaintiffs should be minimal.

But Jones said he would likely be held in contempt if he took the stand again, because the judge would not allow him to say he is “innocent.”

Jones’ attorney, Norm Pattis, told the judge that his client was boycotting the proceedings because he feels he’s being asked to either commit perjury, be held in contempt of court or invoke his rights not to answer questions under the Fifth Amendment.

He had plenty of opportunities to submit an actual defense. Doing so would have involved cooperating with the court, though, and he wasn't willing to go that far.

Jones is telling the literal truth there. He could not defend himself in the damages phase because he would not be allowed to assert the defense that he did not commit defamation, because that had already been decided (without a trial) by the court's default judgement.

And it conveniently elides all the opportunities he did have to defend himself, but instead chose to shoot himself in the foot.

It’s like a criminal killed while evading the police. Not how things are supposed to go, but he did it to himself.

How do you figure that Jones's statements were parody? He intended that people take them as truth, not as parody.

Because everything he does is to be shocking to entertain.

But shocking != parody. Nor, technically, does parody = entertaining. Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 US 569, 583 (1994) ["'First Amendment protections do not apply only to those who speak clearly, whose jokes are funny, and whose parodies succeed'" (quoting Yankee Publishing Inc. v. News America Publishing, Inc., 809 F. Supp. 267, 280 (SDNY 1992) )

I mean, what exactly was he parodying? Parody by definition involves a reference to something else.

He's a parody of serious news.

But, again, surely you don't think he presents it as parody. Which is what makes something parody.

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