Alex Jones found liable

[Hygro]

However, as precedent, as we discovered it was like 6 people initiating most of the vaccine conspiracies, I don't really mind they are held liable to looser interpretations of damaging speech.

 

[Edmund Ironside]

Yet another court case Alex Jones has lost. He is definitely batting below the Mendoza line. Still when it comes to being on the losing end of lawsuits he is still an ameuter compared to Trump and his allies who last i checked racked up an impressive 61 strike outs with their election lawsuits!

Still can't believe that after having had their young children murdered that their parents have then had to put up with harrisment from far right conspiracy nuts, what a country we live in.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm not a Jones fan, and I think he's a f*ing liar. I don't think he would have turned his opinion around on the "reality" of Sandy Hook had he not come under fiduciary fire years back.

i don't think he's honest either. though he did "turn opinion around" on sandy hook already actually...if you don't listen to just what was put forth in this case, he was all over the place on it. he had mutually-exclusive stated conspiracies regarding it, it seems. that's obviously not good for his credibility, but it's also inconvenient to a defamation case if it were to be decided on the merits, because it makes it harder to demonstrate damages. though plaintiff also didn't do what is normally required for defamation to even be claimed.

I guess it's because some court procedure hasn't been followed (we all have the right to that), but suspension of ability to claim specific things, and disallowance of certain things as proof, is quite normal in court.

a judge directing the jury to disregard something the state's law explicitly defines as a mitigating factor is extraordinary. though perhaps not as much as the summary judgment was in the context of this case. these are both non-trivial misconduct by the judge, and it will torpedo the credibility of everything that happened here. all for what?

i ask whether these procedural travesties of justice were really necessary. like, was it really impossible to pin damages on jones as a defamer/inflicting distress intentionally without the court breaking texas' own legal doctrine and refusing to hear a case on the merits? jones hasn't won a lot of friends with his nonsense. one might presume the case, done legit, might have merit. but given how this went down, the court is doing its darndest to look worse than jones, which is an impressive feat regarding a man who called out "turning the frogs gay". a shovel wasn't enough to get there, so the court took a jackhammer to its own procedures and to the bill of rights, for reasons that don't make sense to me unless it thought plaintiff couldn't prevail otherwise.

Plus a couple of bullets that really depend on legal technicalities but do seem strange.

this whole thing is riddled with odd choices by the court. i am not comfortable with the precedent this crap sets, at all.

i forget the exact quote, but i'm reminded of the one that goes along the lines of "defending liberty means you will ultimately defend the worst that are just inside the line of acceptable".

the way this case was handled, a court could similarly tag cnn or fox or whatever with misrepresenting a tragedy, claim ieed, and demand analytics in addition to depositions. i suspect that like jones, these places are unlikely to be able to produce literally all analytics requested.

another interesting note: said analytics are relevant to the amount jones would have had to pay, but not to whether he defamed/inflicted distress. this information could have had no possible bearing on the merits of the case which was handed extraordinary summary judgment...yet it seems it was the primary factor used to give the summary judgment, despite depositions/information that was turned over? i thought normal procedure for things that aren't given is that they are presumed worst-case for person not producing the information. summary judgment in this context seems indefensible.

then we get trump back in office, cnn misreports something about another "summer of love" style riot, and a republican-friendly court backs a summary judgment of millions and millions on cnn + some specific individual there. cnn doesn't get to defend itself or even argue mitigating factors, just a nice alabama jury to decide how much it has to pay.

is that the world we want to see? that's what this behavior opens the door to doing. what was once slapp bait is now a legit way to legally take down media, in strict violation multiple rights guaranteed by the constitution.

Still can't believe that after having had their young children murdered that their parents have then had to put up with harrisment from far right conspiracy nuts, what a country we live in.

always looks worse when you don't agree with it.

i'm reminded of the protesters harassing the woman who got shot at because a dude fired a gun at her, then at the cops, and got clapped by the cops ultimately. people protesting outside her residents and yelling at her when she complained about it.

the correct response to people harassing the sandy hook parents is to go after the people committing harassment for harassment. not fabricate bs to fake a summary judgment

However, as precedent, as we discovered it was like 6 people initiating most of the vaccine conspiracies, I don't really mind they are held liable to looser interpretations of damaging speech.

i would be interested to hear why you feel this particular case merits "looser interpretations", and how such a standard applied in this context wouldn't/couldn't be expanded to apply to others.

the 1st was put in 1st for a reason. in a world where canadian health minister is now calling them "therapeutics" and vastly different policies had similar results, i would be interested to hear why these conspiracies in particular are so damaging (in marginal harm sense) to merit loosening the standards on a right where doing so should reasonably held to the highest scrutiny we can.

 

[Edmund Ironside]

the way this case was handled, a court could similarly tag cnn or fox or whatever with misrepresenting a tragedy, claim ieed, and demand analytics in addition to depositions. i suspect that like jones, these places are unlikely to be able to produce literally all analytics requested.

Isn't this what effectively happened in the Nick Sandmann case?
Do you think CNN and Wapo having to give him lots of money for accidently misrepresenting what happened at the protest set a dangerous president?

 

[Senethro]

Regarding the letter of the law and precedents being potentially misused by Trump or an imitator in the future: So what?

We have already seen that the letter of the law is less important than the people in place. The capture of institutions by loyalists allows circumvention.

If Trump rides again, he won't let them saddle him with a Pence this time.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Isn't this what effectively happened in the Nick Sandmann case?
Do you think CNN and Wapo having to give him lots of money for accidently misrepresenting what happened at the protest set a dangerous president?

lol, no. the legal handling between these cases are night and day different. to the extent that you asking this is comical.

cnn didn't want the sandmann case in court, so it settled. jones wanted to defend himself in court, but a judge ruled that shouldn't be allowed because reasons (specifically, failure to produce something he allegedly does not have, and which is not relevant to the merits of either claim by plaintiff).

if cnn were handled like jones, they'd have "lost" a trial to sandmann without being able to say anything to defend themselves, at all. in fact without notice for defamation retraction, they'd have not even been able to react.

in jones' trial, prosecution played ~8s clip of unrelated party and that was accepted in evidence, ignoring completeness doctrine the judge was quite strict on earlier. that judge is doing a good job of making jones look like a legit person relative to herself. she's that impressively terrible/dishonest.

Regarding the letter of the law and precedents being potentially misused by Trump or an imitator in the future: So what?

is the first amendment just a piece of paper to you? is due process just a phrase to you? what do you mean "so what"?

when you're okay with government disregarding the bill of rights, what makes you think any of those rights still apply to you? if i as a government employee threw you in jail tomorrow, what recourse would you claim that would uniquely defend your rights in a way this sham trial does not protect those of jones? so your rights were violated. so what? what are you doing to do about it in this hypothetical, arbitrary criminal?

edit: i don't claim anybody here is actually criminal, merely that the standards used imply that the government can do so without basis. we don't have to look far in the world to see actual examples of this happening. disregard rule of law here, and what makes anybody thinks further disregard for law won't follow?

 

[Edmund Ironside]

lol, no. the legal handling between these cases are night and day different. to the extent that you asking this is comical.

Putting aside your unnecessarily snide remarks to my original question, if the Sandmann case had gone to trial who do you feel should have won, him or CNN/WAPO?

 

[Birdjaguar]

@TheMeInTeam Do you have actual legal sources for your claims or you just spitballing?

 

[Zelig]

it is not. it is one of the worst disgraces of us "justice" in recent memory. that's more because of how the court proceedings were handled than any defense of jones per se'.

there were numerous serious problems with this case/trial, rarely seen in any normal us court proceeding:

• defamation:
  • texas defamation law requires timely notice for retraction of defamation claims/chance to retract. that didn't happen in this case.
  • jones never had a proper trial where he could defend himself on the merits. he was given a "summary judgment", despite many hours of deposition and information turned over, because he could not produce social media analytics. he claimed he did not have them. summary judgment against defendant in this context is both extraordinary and alarming. there are only a few cases in us history that used this despite defendant producing information, and they are nothing like this.
  • defamation requires the person(s) defamed be specific or inferred specific. iirc, this has historically meant <25 people. there were more sandy hook victims than that
  • this case ignores the majority of jones' speech on sandy hook, which acknowledged the shooting and was instead doing a conspiracy theory about the government not trying hard to stop these events so it can use them as fuel to ban guns. that's not a particularly ethical position to take either, but it conflicts with the accusations in the case and was blocked from ever being heard in court on the merits, again.
• thus, defamation would almost certainly fail on the merits. the more interesting claim is intentional infliction of emotional distress:
  • jones was told what he could and could not say on the stand, even before this jury which was already handed the conclusion he was guilty.
  • that includes ridiculous things, such as talking about the fact that he apologized. judge in this case informed jury to ignore that he apologized as a mitigating factor, in defiance of texas law which explicitly says it is a mitigating factor
  • the numbers for damages in this trial are looney toons
  • same as defamation above, jones was denied due process for this case to be heard on the merits.
• making this situation even worse:
  • appellate court is similarly corrupt and will likely deny and try to block a stay on paying the money while this goes to appeal.
  • jones' lawyers sending his cell phone information, and its use by prosecution, were both unethical actions that could (in more sane courts) result in mistrial. there's a high chance jones can pin malpractice on his lawyers and make them eat the court-awarded looney toons damages instead.

it should not matter if you like jones or think he's a complete cretin. this court is kangaroo to the levels i would normally expect only out of bad family courts. this process of "justice" is a threat to literally every american. saying things the government disagrees with is not defamation. conspiracy theories are not "defamation".


??? that's not even alleged here. fwiw, he advocated against the riots on jan. 6, claiming it was a setup, even as it was happening. us government practices since them lent him more credibility than he should have had in saying that.

either way, there is significant misinformation about what jones supposedly did here and how the trial has actually happened/progressed. he was found guilty before even having a trial. this was to decide the money he had to pay out, and even in this context he was restricted in what he could say.

i would imagine that if jones were really guilty of the things accused, it would not require trampling multiple rights explicitly granted in the bill of rights in order to pin crazy damages on him. by the standards given in this case, we'd have expected the sandman case to outright sink multiple major media outlets...

Do you have any examples of anyone of similar political persuasion losing a defamation case on the merits?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Putting aside your unnecessarily snide remarks to my original question, if the Sandmann case gone to trial who do you feel should have won, him or CNN/WAPO?

i think sandmann had a strong case on the merits. but we'll never know.

@TheMeInTeam Do you have actual legal sources for your claims or you just spitballing?

which claims? some of what i say is backed by the proceedings themselves (aka that a summary judgment happened). i claim it is extraordinary because there are not many prior examples of summary judgment used with anything resembling this fact pattern. it's hard to prove a negative.

as for texas law...we can probably dredge that up pretty easily...i'm going to call libel "good enough" for now https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/CP/htm/CP.73.htm

Sec. 73.003. MITIGATING FACTORS. (a) To determine the extent and source of actual damages and to mitigate exemplary damages, the defendant in a libel action may give evidence of the following matters if they have been specially pleaded:

(1) all material facts and circumstances surrounding the claim for damages and defenses to the claim;

(2) all facts and circumstances under which the libelous publication was made; and

(3) any public apology, correction, or retraction of the libelous matter made and published by the defendant.

(b) To mitigate exemplary damages, the defendant in a libel action may give evidence of the intention with which the libelous publication was made if the matter has been specially pleaded.

the court deciding on damages seems at least partially in violation of 1 and 2 as well, as it instructed him he could not argue said facts. i guess if the judge decides you can't make pleas, you can't make them. instructions to jury were false though.

Do you have any examples of anyone of similar political persuasion losing a defamation case on the merits?

is there a reason that question is relevant to my points, or this thread in general? i am not sure i am even willing to respect the notion that the merits of such a case shouldn't be considered.

 

[Edmund Ironside]

i think sandmann had a strong case on the merits. but we'll never know

Thank you for the clear and polite answer to the question, I appreciate it.

Just for clarity, is your beef only with the most recent libel case related to Sandyhook which he has lost (so a due process issue) or with all the cases he has lost regarding it (so an infringement on free speech issue), or both?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Thank you for the clear and polite answer to the question, I appreciate it.

Just for clarity, is your beef only with the most recent libel case related to Sandyhook which he has lost (so a due process issue) or with all the cases he has lost regarding it (so an infringement on free speech issue), or both?

most recent one, because it's a clown show legal process that is awful precedent for much more normal americans going forward.

don't know about the other ones. i presume they were not as badly handled and that the outcomes were more fair, absent looking into more detail. this one really surprised me with how badly it was handled.

i'm guessing at least some of those earlier ones were considered on legal merits, right? i'm presuming that's what happened, and that he lost properly in that context. which makes the clown show for this case all the more odd. did they really need a summary judgment based on something unrelated to the allegations of plaintiffs?

 

[Zelig]

is there a reason that question is relevant to my points, or this thread in general?

It would establish your credibility on the subject.

i am not sure i am even willing to respect the notion that the merits of such a case shouldn't be considered.

I haven’t suggested anything of the sort.

 

[Kyriakos]

I heard that the lawyers of Alex Jones gave (by accident?) records of his mails/phone calls to the defense.
In such a case, isn't the defense required to reveal to the judge that this happened (who in turn has to notify Jones' lawyers)? Did they actually first reveal this as the trial was ongoing and they were examining Jones on the stand, then showed he lied by (only then) mentioning they acquired his files in such a way?

As for the default judgement (which is what established liability, so was extremely crucial), there is this video by LegalEagle, who summarizes how that happened - and yes, it can be also seen as problematic:

 

[Arwon]

Cant believe years of engaging in borderline contempt of court finally had consequences lol

 

[Senethro]

is the first amendment just a piece of paper to you? is due process just a phrase to you? what do you mean "so what"?

when you're okay with government disregarding the bill of rights, what makes you think any of those rights still apply to you? if i as a government employee threw you in jail tomorrow, what recourse would you claim that would uniquely defend your rights in a way this sham trial does not protect those of jones? so your rights were violated. so what? what are you doing to do about it in this hypothetical, arbitrary criminal?

The start of my answer might be in the part of my post you did not quote, where I indicated I believe all protections are negligible when institutions are captured.

 

[Samson]

i suspect that like jones, [cnn or fox] are unlikely to be able to produce literally all analytics requested

I bet they can. For the scientific data web site I used to be in charge of I could quote analytics down to indavidual users routes through the site. As these buisinesses are much more involved in metrics like "conversion ratio" and such I would expect them to be able to provide analytics to any detail requested.

 

[El_Machinae]

What is this about not producing analytics? Most of the old articles talk about the summary judgment being about just the lack of participation in Discovery overall. And what is this about an apology? Are we referring to the apology from after the lawsuit started?

 

[Angst]

I bet they can. For the scientific data web site I used to be in charge of I could quote analytics down to indavidual users routes through the site. As these buisinesses are much more involved in metrics like "conversion ratio" and such I would expect them to be able to provide analytics to any detail requested.

with jones being as prolific a salesman as he is in reality, i would be very surprised if he really didn't do analytics. infowars is a huge business. he's been known to be reluctant to share numbers of how big the business is historically, as to why he does this one can speculate; we may not ever know for sure if he does analytics, but we have found after some digging that he's repeatedly lied about the size of the company and the amount of money it earns. people's qualified guesses is that you can't really be Rage Against The Machine Last Standing Man We're Almost Shut Down when the reality is that he earns millions upon millions of dollars weekly.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

What is this about not producing analytics? Most of the old articles talk about the summary judgment being about just the lack of participation in Discovery overall. And what is this about an apology? Are we referring to the apology from after the lawsuit started?

they did participate in discover extensively though. the "lack of participation" was this stuff, to my knowledge?

as for apology, given when the defamation notice happened relative to the court proceedings it was timely, lol.

The start of my answer might be in the part of my post you did not quote, where I indicated I believe all protections are negligible when institutions are captured.

it's an individual named in proceedings and this thread.

not sure what you mean about "institutions captured" anyway.

As for the default judgement (which is what established liability, so was extremely crucial), there is this video by LegalEagle, who summarizes how that happened - and yes, it can be also seen as problematic:

"not responsive to discovery request" is a convenient way to handwave away the information that was provided. also not sure what legal eagle is talking about wrt not sitting for depositions, jones did that numerous times for long total hrs.

It would establish your credibility on the subject.

openly pursuing ad hominem? not respecting this, if you have something relevant to the discussion try again with that.

Cant believe years of engaging in borderline contempt of court finally had consequences lol

easy to say that, not so easy to show what actually occurred constitutes that.

In such a case, isn't the defense required to reveal to the judge that this happened (who in turn has to notify Jones' lawyers)? Did they actually first reveal this as the trial was ongoing and they were examining Jones on the stand, then showed he lied by (only then) mentioning they acquired his files in such a way?

the defense lawyers are jones' lawyers. normally prosecution/plaintiffs can't use that information. the way the conversation between plaintiff and defense lawyers was handled was unusual, and plaintiff lawyer used a loophole attempt to bypass that restriction. judge is friendly to plaintiff obvious, so this didn't result in mistrial. might get defense lawyers sued successfully, though.