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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29716 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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While everything you said is true, it avoids the main crux of @JarJarJedi's point. The typical American makes $1-$2 million in their entire lifetimes and, as awful as lies were, it's really hard to argue that the damage they did to the parents is 5-10 times the amount an American produces over 40 years.

Bringing up Jone's "profit" seems irrelevant, since we're arguing over compensation for the victims (which ought to be decided by the harm inflicted on them), not a fine that goes to the government.

My point is that @JarJarJedi's point is misguided. @JarJarJedi's seems to be saying that it is unjust that the plaintiffs received a windfall that places them in the top 1% of Americans. But focusing on whether it is a windfall is a red herring; the question is whether the amount of damages reflects the harm suffered. Presumably, the jury found that the amount in question merely made the plaintiffs whole, because that is what compensatory damages do ("Compensatory damages are intended to make the plaintiff "whole" for any losses resulting from the defendant's interference with the plaintiff's rights." Transportation Ins. Co. v. Moriel, 879 SW 2d 10 (Tex Supreme Court 1994)). So, although the jury might well have miscalculated, the mere fact that the award puts the plaintiffs in the top 1% or even higher says nothing about whether the award is excessive.

And, it is normal that disgorged profits go to the plaintiff, rather than the govt, because that is what incentivizes the lawsuit in the first place. If we want defendants not to profit from their torts, then we have to allow plaintiffs, not third parties like the govt, to have reason to seek recovery of those profits.

But focusing on whether it is a windfall is a red herring; the question is whether the amount of damages reflects the harm suffered

It looks like you taking only half of my argument. The whole argument is that the windfall is not reasonable exactly because the damage is not windfall-worthy, so to speak. I know that trying to establish order on suffering is always morally suspect and smells wrong, but if we're talking money compensation, there's no way around it. And once we get past that moral objection, I think, absent new information unknown to me, that $10M does not sound very reasonable against the angle of "make the plaintiffs whole".

First, that was your argument, but it was not JarJar's argument, which was:

I do not understand why it is reasonable that a person who was a victim of a lie (admittedly, a very vile and disgusting one, but still one lie), should instantly become top 1% rich just because of it?

Second, I don't know that "windfall worthy" means. Suppose, for example, tomorrow morning I call Nick Sandman on the phone and threaten, "I am going to kill you, you smirking racist." Suppose also that his local federal court has a night court with a super-lightning docket, so that tomorrow evening he wins a judgment of $10,000 against me, which seems perfectly reasonable given that a felony conviction for such threats is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000. See 18 USC § 875(c) and 18 USC § 3571(b)(3). The next day, I do it again. And again, every day for ten years. At the end of that 10 years, Mr. Sandman will have garnered a cool $36,500,000 (I take a break from my campaign of harassment each leap day), placing him in the top 1%. Quite the windfall! Yet I dare say that few would opine that he was not properly compensated for the damage he suffered.

Suppose instead that Nick Sandman lives in the real world, where such courts do not exist, so he delays suing until ten years have elapsed. He demonstrates to the jury that I made 3650 death threats over ten years, and the jury awards him damages of $10K each, for a single lump sum judgment of $36,500,000. Why is that judgment any less an accurate assessment of the damages suffered by Mr. Sandman than were the 3650 cumulative judgments? I don't think there is any way to distinguish them, and hence I don't think the fact that a single large verdict was returned tells us anything, in itself, about whether the verdict reasonably reflects the amount of damages suffered by the plaintiff.

First, that was your argument, but it was not JarJar's argument...

You're replying to JarJar with this post.

Thx. This is why I shouldn't use my phone here.

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