Alex Jones found liable

[Kyriakos]

If Jones can pay 42 million, why have the stupidest lawyers possible? (Legal Eagle now also made a video about that blunder, and focused even more on the lawyer losing the plea for a mistrial).
Unless it is a ... conspiracy

 

[El_Machinae]

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.

Okay, well an apology after a filing will be a separate consideration from one before a filing. That would be local law as to whether it 'counts'. I can see why it wouldn't. But I can also see why it would (just like how an immediate guilty plea helps as a mitigating factor with regards to criminal sentence).

You should probably link to articles about how this 'analytics' thing was a main contributor to them having a summary judgement filed. My impression is that there was a lot of different contemptuous actions from him.

 

[Samson]

If Jones can pay 42 million, why have the stupidest lawyers possible? (Legal Eagle now also made a video about that blunder, and focused even more on the lawyer losing the plea for a mistrial).
Unless it is a ... conspiracy

Is it possible that he somehow found the one lawyer in the whole world who would do the right thing over what would make them money, and leaked the calls rather than lie about them? More likely just incompetent.

 

[Birdjaguar]

You should probably link to articles....

GOP talking points don't have reliable links to legal sources.

 

[Kyriakos]

Is it possible that he somehow found the one lawyer in the whole world who would do the right thing over what would make them money, and leaked the calls rather than lie about them? More likely just incompetent.

It's not the right thing for a lawyer; such would get him disbarred.
Then again, if he was paid to do it... ^_^ /conspiracy

 

[El_Machinae]

GOP talking points don't have reliable links to legal sources.

My suspicion is that he knows something that I don't and also didn't make it into my bubble.

The articles I saw implied a swath of bad faith behavior. That's very specifically different from the idea that the Discovery ordered one thing that wasn't actually reasonable

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Okay, well an apology after a filing will be a separate consideration from one before a filing.

normally that would be so, because normally any request for correction/retraction wrt defaming language is timely.

defamation in context of this case is already questionable at its face. jones says inaccurate/offensive stuff fairly often. defamation usually requires that those defamed could be specifically id'd. it's intentional infliction of emotional harm that seems to be a credible case. even there, one would expect a request for retraction in a timely fashion, not waiting a long amount of time and then filing suit almost immediately after giving any notification whatsoever.

You should probably link to articles about how this 'analytics' thing was a main contributor to them having a summary judgement filed. My impression is that there was a lot of different contemptuous actions from him.

i will wait to see if i can find stuff that pins down exactly what "discovery" he "did not participate" in. the summary judgment remains fishy, though, since defense turned over information. looks even more fishy when he is directed against stating substantive facts about the case that should be mitigating factors in damages against tx law.

he himself is fishy, but i expect our legal system to be held to a higher standard than alex jones.

Is it possible that he somehow found the one lawyer in the whole world who would do the right thing over what would make them money, and leaked the calls rather than lie about them? More likely just incompetent.

malpractice is not "the right thing". there is a proper process to follow if defense attorneys believe client is committing perjury, or even if they just find new information that would make their testimony inaccurate. that process is not "oopsy i passed info to plaintiff w/o telling client".

this isn't a small mistake though. it's gross incompetence or deliberate undermining of client, because they didn't use proper response even after sharing wrong information was known to them.

GOP talking points don't have reliable links to legal sources.

??? this thread is about alex jones. pretty sure he's no friend to gop, at least not beyond the moments he's talking about their opposition. they probably dislike him less than democrats? part of the reason he's having so many problems is that he hasn't exactly made a lot of "friends in the right places".

The articles I saw implied a swath of bad faith behavior. That's very specifically different from the idea that the Discovery ordered one thing that wasn't actually reasonable

NPR Cookie Consent and Choices

Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis cited the defendants' "willful noncompliance" with the discovery process as the reasoning behind the ruling. Bellis noted that defendants failed to turned over financial and analytics data that were requested multiple times by the Sandy Hook family plaintiffs.

neither of these documents have relevance to the question of defamation/ieed. they would matter for evaluating damages, but not for the merits of whether defamation happened. looks more to me like court stooping down to jones' level, meeting bad faith with bad faith. not a good look for the legal process, especially not since jones did turn over plenty of information requested.

 

[Gorbles]

defamation usually requires that those defamed could be specifically id'd.

Ah yes, calling out the parents of children who went to a specific school in a specific year in no way identifies these people (or their children, or the school itself). Of course.

 

[Zelig]

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

A comparable case that was ruled against the defendent on the merits seems pretty relevant.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

A comparable case that was ruled against the defendent on the merits seems pretty relevant.

no, because if this case were ruled on its merits i would not be making the complaint i made in this thread in the first place. i don't think jones' previous cases were handled this way, but correct me if i'm wrong.

what i am saying is true or not, and can be falsified in that context when it is not. i will not respect attempts at ad hominem.

 

[Birdjaguar]

??? this thread is about alex jones. pretty sure he's no friend to gop, at least not beyond the moments he's talking about their opposition. they probably dislike him less than democrats? part of the reason he's having so many problems is that he hasn't exactly made a lot of "friends in the right places".

Your posts are just the ongoing GOP talking points on this case. No actual legal backup sources; just pontificating on how he was wronged.

 

[El_Machinae]

Oh, I see. Thank you. They appear to be the straw that broke the camel's back.
As far as I can tell, this is the transcript. I agree that I could find a better source, but it looks real enough to me and is a quick read.
It's a summary of bad faith efforts, of which producing the analytics is only one.

Analytics would be germane, because a profit motive to defame would be evidence of defamation. Proving defamation includes proving that it was knowingly false. Plaintiffs cannot examine that motive without the underlying data.

Remember that Jones burned through attorneys, and saying 'incompetent counsel' is only really a defense if you weren't hamstringing your own counsel..

 

[Zelig]

no, because if this case were ruled on its merits i would not be making the complaint i made in this thread in the first place. i don't think jones' previous cases were handled this way, but correct me if i'm wrong.

I’m not asking for about jones’ previous case, I’m asking, as someone who isn’t particularly familiar with the US legal system, for a comparable case where the defendant was found guilty, that was decided on the merits. Presumably that’s possible; I’d like to see what it would require, and how it would differ from this case, by way of example.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I’m not asking for about jones’ previous case, I’m asking, as someone who isn’t particularly familiar with the US legal system, for a comparable case where the defendant was found guilty, that was decided on the merits. Presumably that’s possible; I’d like to see what it would require, and how it would differ from this case, by way of example.

what is sufficiently comparable by your estimation? excepting people who literally don't show up to court at all, nearly every defamation case either settles or gets decided on merits to my knowledge. but not many defamation cases exactly resemble what has happened with jones (inferred harm to > 25 people, big delay, etc), so what is valid for comparison per this request?

 

[Lexicus]

Your posts are just the ongoing GOP talking points on this case. No actual legal backup sources; just pontificating on how he was wronged.

And sadly my post predicting this take before it happened was mysteriously lost

 

[Lexicus]

Remember that Jones burned through attorneys, and saying 'incompetent counsel' is only really a defense if you weren't hamstringing your own counsel..

There's also no right to competent counsel in a civil case, that's only a thing in a criminal proceeding.

 

[JollyRoger]

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...

First I will admit I have not followed the case closely, but in perusing the documents filed by the parties and orders by the judge (and appellate courts) and my knowledge of Texas law and experience in litigating in Texas, including defamation claims, I have to respectfully disagree with some of the above.

In a Texas defamation case, the defendant files an answer and there is a special motion to dismiss phase that has some statutory deadlines. In the defendants' answer and in their motion to dismiss, they did not appear to claim they did not receive a demand to retract. In fact, it would be odd, given the publicity of the case and the competence of the attorneys involved for such a t to not be crossed.

Second, while a portion of a case or sometimes an entire case is very commonly decided by summary judgment (in Texas, in most states, and in Federal Court), that does not appear to be what happened here. Jones was found liable in a default judgment. The default judgment was reached after Jones had numerous opportunities to fulfill his discovery response obligations which he failed to do. He took advantage of interlocutory appeal on this issue and lost there. He was not stripped of due process rights as this is the way the court systems work in the United States.

In a defamation case, the alleged defamatory statements can be placed in context, but it would be in the context of the forum they were published and Jones would not necessarily be able to bring in everything he ever said in other contexts. You would normally review a broadcast in the context of what a viewer or listener would take away from that particular broadcast.

Apology is generally not a mitigating factor and to the extent it is, its timing and forum would be considered.

As to the appeals court being corrupt, Jones has every opportunity to take this to the Texas Supreme Court that has been all-Republican since 1999 has has set down a good portion of the defamation and discovery-abuse precedents that befuddled Jones' defense.

As to the targeted, the group that Jones' allegedly defamed was a closed universe and this was not a class action. Specific plaintiffs brought claims. As Jones' own Motion to Dismiss points out, the named plaintiff was a relatively high profile member of the closed universe of potential plaintiffs of Jones' alleged defamatory statements.

This was a civil case, so guilty is the wrong word to use. The word would be liable.

Without reading the trial transcripts, it is not uncommon for a witness to be limited on what they can say. In this case, there was a Motion in Limine that was filed pre-trial and hearings on the extent that testimony could be limited or not allowed without a specific ruling from the judge. Again, fairly standard stuff that has roots in English common law and the founding of our country and framing of the Constitution.

The damages are steep and will likely be cut back as is also common. There is great distrust of juries in Texas on damages, because that usually hurts the people feeding money to the legislators and judges (who have to run for office in Texas and raise campaign funds).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

In a Texas defamation case, the defendant files an answer and there is a special motion to dismiss phase that has some statutory deadlines. In the defendants' answer and in their motion to dismiss, they did not appear to claim they did not receive a demand to retract.

correct, they received it. it just was not "timely", relative to when alleged defamation happened nor to the case itself.

Second, while a portion of a case or sometimes an entire case is very commonly decided by summary judgment (in Texas, in most states, and in Federal Court), that does not appear to be what happened here. Jones was found liable in a default judgment. The default judgment was reached after Jones had numerous opportunities to fulfill his discovery response obligations which he failed to do.

this is the problem point, though. they could request hair from his butt cheeks in discovery, but that would not be appropriate. they could request the original autobiography of gilgamesh, but it would not be possible to produce it. there are limits on discovery.

my understanding is that defense claimed that they didn't possess the analytics, which might be true. thus they could not produce it, and default judgment on that wouldn't be reasonable. similarly, default judgment due to not producing financial documents in a defamation case...well maybe you can explain why financial documentation would be relevant to the merits of defamation significantly more so than his hairs.

Apology is generally not a mitigating factor and to the extent it is, its timing and forum would be considered.

i linked the tx law that mentions it specifically, is that out of date?

As to the targeted, the group that Jones' allegedly defamed was a closed universe and this was not a class action. Specific plaintiffs brought claims.

not class action, but > 25 persons. one of the things that must be considered for "inferred" defamation is that the inference is sufficiently specific. >25 people died in sandy hook, and presumably victims of emotional distress are significantly greater than 25. i was under impression that ~25 was typical for where specific individual inferences were no longer considered reasonable.

obviously, this is somewhere between "this one person named x did y bad thing" and "i hereby declare all of political party x to be corrupt". the former is defamation (if false), the latter is not.

the total victim list of sandy hook is not clear, especially in terms of where you draw the line on victims in context of the case. similarly, it is not clear exactly who or how many people are alleged "crisis actors" per the conspiracy bs. not only did immediate family members of the victims who died suffer, but also anybody who was at the school and survived, and likely at least some people beyond both of those groups. that's a lot of people. who were the alleged crisis actors, and who was specifically targeted by jones' statements? that's not so clear. i would be a lot more comfortable if the court addressed this without giving a default judgment (thanks for correct) on failure to produce documentation that can't be relevant to the question of defamation.

Without reading the trial transcripts, it is not uncommon for a witness to be limited on what they can say. In this case, there was a Motion in Limine that was filed pre-trial and hearings on the extent that testimony could be limited or not allowed without a specific ruling from the judge. Again, fairly standard stuff that has roots in English common law and the founding of our country and framing of the Constitution.

however, it is not common for judge to direct jury against what the law says, or for defendant to be incapable of talking about directly relevant things to the case/mitigating factors.

 

[Kyriakos]

@JollyRoger , can you explain what is going on with (starts at 19.25) the point in the video about damages restricted by Texas law to the region of 1 million dollars? Is that only part of the damages awarded or a cap on all in this trial?
Before that, LegalEagle briefly refers to the jury (typically) not being told about such a cap, allows to ask for any amount and then the judge having to limit it due to the law, but I wanted to ask if it is on part of the amount or all.

 

[JollyRoger]

I went back a little bit to see where he was getting his number and I think he may misunderstandsthe statute:

Exemplary damages awarded against a defendant may not exceed an amount equal to the greater of:
(1)(A) two times the amount of economic damages; plus
(B) an amount equal to any noneconomic damages found by the jury, not to exceed $750,000; or
(2) $200,000.

So let's say you have economic damages of $2,000,000 and non-economic damages of $1,000,000. Punitive damages would be capped at $4,750,000 (2 x $2,000,000) + $750,000. The only way he is right is if all the damages in the Jones case are non-economic, which I suppose is possible.