Bankruptcy itself aside, the judgement against Alex Jones here is huge. I haven't looked it up but I'm sure it broke records. The plaintiffs' initial demands of trillions of dollars were absolutely insane. They could have actually gotten more money with a lower judgement that allowed him to pay over time. But clearly restitution is not the objective.
It's not the only objective, punishment is also an objective. If not you get settlements like Purdue Pharma's one which even after paying billions in damages still had made more money than that, you don't want an incentive to break the law like that, it becomes just another cost for the business and not really a punishment for it.
Not sure why the bankruptcy trustee working with the companies largest creditors, so large, that a simple proportionate would result in them claiming pretty much the entire possible payout, can be considered collusion.
The only people who can possibly be harmed are the creditors themselves. If they want to strike a deal that results in more equitable outcome, but with less total cash, that’s their business. Remember Alex Jones is on the hook for close to a billon dollars, and that sum has already been through various appeals and due process already, it’s no longer up for debate. The only question left is how Jones is gonna pay it. Unless someone creditably believes someone is going to hand over close to a billion dollars to purchase InfoWars, it seems silly to reject an offer that the creditors themselves believe is fair and reasonable.
Because there is no actual money, there must be consensus among creditors, and the assets in question might more than pay the debt (in general). I believe there are also tax implications to writing off debt in some cases, as well as tax implications associated with the actual sale of property. So no, you can't just go rogue and take possession of someone's property for any price you like without even having the cash, just because they haven't paid their debts or they are an unlikeable person.
What makes you think there wasn’t agreement from all the creditors? There is zero chance the assets can cover the debt (which is close to a billion dollars). The whole point of the deal was that the primary creditor was giving up part of their claim to allow the other creditors to actually see a real payout. There was real cash on the table, and under the rejected deal, every creditor, except the biggest, would see more actual cash in their pocket.
All of this was only possible because the largest creditors worked with the trustee to create a better deal for everyone involved. The fact it also allowed the largest creditors to stick it Alex Jones was icing on top.
> So no, you can't just go rogue and take possession of someone's property for any price you like without even having the cash, just because they haven't paid their debts or they are an unlikeable person.
If you’re the one that owns their debts, then yes you absolutely can. The current owner has already forfeited their claim to the property when they defaulted on the debt and started bankruptcy proceedings. Why the hell would the owner of the debt be required to have the needed cash on hand to repay themselves, that’s ridiculous.
Just to reiterate - the trillions number is irrelevant - it's just an initial damages claim. The judgements were for 965M and 50M - slightly over 1B in total - and the expected final award to the injured parties is likely going to be below 200k.
> But clearly restitution is not the objective.
Sure. And damages can be punitive in nature.
Free advice, kids: stay in school, don’t do drugs, and comply with court orders when you’re sued.
No they are not. Technically nobody knows what someone might be willing to pay. That is why public auctions are the default. The only reason an auction should be private is to protect the identity or interests of the bidders. Taking one round of bids from private parties is not an auction.
Yes they are. They encourage people to make the best bid they reasonably can based on their desire to ensure the purchase goes through. There's a reason they are the de facto standard for bidding on government contracts.
> Technically nobody knows what someone might be willing to pay.
This is correct. But what you don't seem to understand is that this also causes people to overbid. This is the reason why the vickrey method was created - to ensure that the highest bidder does not massively overpay against the second.
> That is why public auctions are the default.
Public auctions are the default for... what? Bankruptcy? In the US, yes. In Canada and other parts of the world, no. And default does not mean only option or best option.
> The only reason an auction should be private is to protect the identity or interests of the bidders.
They are frequently used explicitly because they often get the person selling the best offer. If the people bidding in auction have asymmetric purchasing power, in an open auction, the winning bid will be slightly over the purchasing power of the weaker party. In a sealed bid auction, the winning party will frequently have a bid with a larger delta than they would have in an open auction.
> Taking one round of bids from private parties is not an auction.
Nothing about the word 'auction' precludes a single round of bidding, sealed or otherwise.
Being liable for an amount more than you have means the people you owe won’t be able to get the full amount, but it doesn’t mean you get to keep all your stuff and pay them nothing.
I think what Alex Jones is more than mere defamation.
Repeatedly lying about the reality of a school mass shooting, over years, in such a way that he caused threats to be made against the families of victims?
Incitement to credible threats of violence, and especially continuing to do so even after you're aware that's what your listeners are doing, deserves severe consequences.
Incitement means means explicitly encouraging. Just because someone people made threats of violence to the families because they believed what Alex Jones said about the shootings, doesn't mean that saying "The shootings were faked" is incitement. If Jones had explicitly said "the families deserve to suffer violent consequences for helping fake the shootings", that would be incitement.
That's why he wasn't convicted of incitement, he was convicted of defamation.
He was literally, as in literally, comparing the families of the victims to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
I don’t know about you, but if someone has been screaming at me for years that I need to be ready for armed conflict with “the enemy” and then points to someone screaming “that guy’s Hitler”, I would definitely take that as explicit encouragement. But obviously it’s all “just comedy” right?
Isn't that the standard rhetoric of progressives towards conservatives?
Tell me with a straight face that such comparisons are entirely unfair.
Especially when Trump himself says things like that he wished he had "Generals like Hitler had". Or joking that he wants Americans to treat him the way North Koreans treat Kim Jong Un
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/06/15/donald-trump-...
These people make the unsavory comparisons to themselves but Democrats can't point it out?
There’s a reason even the right wing hardliners abandoned this guy.
More to the point he has Roger Stone and Steve Bannon on the show constantly, who in turn have direct access to Trump.
Alex is firmly within the mainstream of the right wing.
I am going to pick ignorant in this case.
> “Folks, we got to get private investigators up to Sandy Hook right now. Because I’m telling you this — this stinks to highest heaven.”
> “Why did Hitler blow up the Reichstag — to get control! Why do governments stage these things — to get our guns! Why can’t people get that through their head?”
Surely it strikes you as odd that the "restorative justice" crowd, which is loathe to punish real crimes, gets all worked up in defending an obviously punitive and exorbitant settlement for... mean words?
The guiding principle is obvious--For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.
https://thepostmillennial.com/new-former-fbi-current-cia-say...
In such a way that somebody else decided on their own do something...
Repeating the verifiable lie that the Sandy Hook incident did not happen, and promoting violence against the surviving families, despite repeated opportunities to stop without penalty, is beyond forgivable.
And this penalty is because he declined to defend this behavior. Remember, it's a default judgement.
The conditioning to the public is that this behavior is not tolerated in a civil society, no matter what your political leanings. Him losing his "intellectual property", but not his voice, is getting off lightly.
Targeted harassment, defamation, libel, intimidation? Sure. Dishonesty, however, doesn’t seem to even remotely cut it.
Indeed. This should be a matter of criminal charges. Jones should be in jail.
OTOH, he would, of course, be pardoned in a couple months.
The First Amendment is nearly absolute, and must protect unpopular and offensive speech even more than it protects popular speech.
(Don't start with the bogus "fire in a crowded theater exception" - that wording comes from Schenk v. United States (which was not even a 1A case, but involved the Espionage Act), and was nearly entirely overturned in 1969's Brandenburg v. Ohio. The clear falsity of the "Fire!" claim has repeatedly and wrongly used as a justification for suppressing speech for a century, to the detriment of us all.)
As much as I'd personally enjoy never hearing from or about him again, I agree that 1A is an extremely important right that should be defended, even if you hate what the person is saying.
But free speech does NOT mean freedom from consequences. Taking away infowars does not stop him from continuing to speak his nonsense.
> But free speech does NOT mean freedom from consequences
Freedom of speech most certainly means freedom from coercive consequences. Or do you think the first amendment merely prevents the government from engaging in physical prior restraint such as putting duct tape over your mouth, and post facto punishment is legal? Ultimately this "consequences" refrain is a broken talking point that was arrived at by people arguing for the attractive cryptofascism of big tech censorship [0].
The right answer is that there are "exceptions" [1] for freedom of speech based on other concepts. For example, forming a contract (especially a verbal one) is done entirely through speech but yet still commits parties to performing other actions in a legally enforceable way. Defamation and harassment are other concepts that get equitably weighed against the ideal of freedom of speech. And those last two are what Jones ran afoul of.
[0] It started off something like "... consequences from private parties" and then the last bit got dropped because the focus wasn't a good faith discussion of freedom but rather a cheering on of the consequences. See also the fake libertarians saying "edgy" things like those who can't afford food should die - their focus isn't really the freedom but rather it's the death.
[1] In actuality they are not exceptions but rather equitable balances. The axiomatic-foundation framing of rights is a dead end, as it intrinsically supports the cryptofascism of denying rights through an ever-increasing amount of preconditions.
You're going to be hearing that word a lot in the next four years. May as well get a head start on it.
How is a bankruptcy case "stealing stuff through improper process"?
On the point of "any award in the billions (much less trillions, as they initially demanded) is exorbitant for mere defamation" this is a pretty clear misunderstanding of our legal system as it is today. Initial claims are a mere formality that do nothing but potentially limit damages - the judgements rendered against Jones were 965M in the Connecticut case and 50M in the Texas case - no other numbers are relevant. Finally, referring to 1.015B as "Billions" feels rather dishonest - the total award is technically above a billion but the families will see nothing near that amount in the final resolution.
Ok then, the lawsuit was settled with an absurdly large judgement. Nobody thinks he has this money.
>Initial claims are a mere formality that do nothing but potentially limit damages - the judgements rendered against Jones were 965M in the Connecticut case and 50M in the Texas case - no other numbers are relevant.
I think it's relevant as to the intent, which is to get a ridiculous sum rather than simply a reasonable one.
> Finally, referring to 1.015B as "Billions" feels rather dishonest - the total award is technically above a billion but the families will see nothing near that amount in the final resolution.
It's not a mere technical distinction. The fact that the number is so high essentially guarantees that AJ cannot pay it. A lower amount might have actually been paid. What can we make of this? The intent was not to get restitution, but rather to destroy the business. That seems unethical. But we're arguing about petty distinctions now. I doubt you will see things my way today so let's stop here.
> It's not a mere technical distinction. The fact that the number is so high essentially guarantees that AJ cannot pay it. A lower amount might have actually been paid. What can we make of this? The intent was not to get restitution, but rather to destroy the business. That seems unethical.
There is actually an important reason to secure an absurdly high judgement - some of the creditors involved in this situation are Jones parents (and I believe some affiliate companies also hold some of the debt). The judgement will be divided proportionally by debt so the size of the judgement will impact how much money from the bankruptcy sale Jones' parents will receive.
I also think it's fair to view this case through the lens of ongoing damages - Jones has received C&Ds about Sandyhook and ignored them - even during the trial he continued to cause additional damages. There was every indication (to me at least) that if the business survived the damages would continue and the only way to reasonably make the other parties whole was to destroy the business.
I understand this may feel like unnecessary censorship but the path to this point was AJ repeatedly ignoring the justice system saying "Stop doing that" and his response to the process up to this point hasn't been to act in good faith.
The judgement was derived from the absurdly large damages he was proven to have caused to his victims.
If he has no money to compensate the victims of his actions for the absurdly large damage he caused then this means he's bound to declare bankruptcy.
> I think it's relevant as to the intent, which is to get a ridiculous sum rather than simply a reasonable one.
The intent is to ensure that people like Alex Jones cannot cause damages to innocent third-parties. The intent is to bring down legal consequences that match the damages caused to others in order to hold him accountable for his actions. Think: if you are going to constrain damages to your cash grab perspective, you'd be ensuring that those well off would be free to cause damages to everyone around them provided the are not as rich so that worst case scenario they would pay a symbolic fine and change nothing in their antisocial behavior. Do you think this makes sense?
Obviously the amount of damages is entirely subjective. AJ said mean and inaccurate things on his podcast or something and that's about the extent of what happened. No person or thing was physically harmed because of this. There was no doubt some stress involved in being the subject of his podcast, but how much is that worth? There are people who literally get killed or maimed and their families don't get anywhere near this kind of settlement.
>The intent is to ensure that people like Alex Jones cannot cause damages to innocent third-parties. The intent is to bring down legal consequences that match the damages caused to others in order to hold him accountable for his actions. Think: if you are going to constrain damages to your cash grab perspective, you'd be ensuring that those well off would be free to cause damages to everyone around them provided the are not as rich so that worst case scenario they would pay a symbolic fine and change nothing in their antisocial behavior. Do you think this makes sense?
The emotional damages caused to others here are unfortunate but not worth a billion dollars (at least from where I'm sitting). You don't have to go to such extremes to discourage someone rich from doing bad things. It could have been a more reasonable number that can actually be paid over a reasonable amount of time. Making those payments would remind the offender to be more careful.
A judgement is what happens when the parties fail to come to any agreement about a settlement; A settlement would be where you'd figure in realistic actual compensation odds.
Also: "Destroying a business" and "unethical"? Businesses are artificial constructs we create and protect only for the social benefit they bring; They have inferior ethical status to human being in terms of accountability, behavioral psychology, and the sheer intangibility of meaningfully "harming" a business. We should be employing meaningfully large civil judgements against businesses far more often, because our criminal laws being difficult to apply at corporate scale so often fail to deter criminal wrongdoing which the justice system would otherwise throw the book at a biological human for.
Steal one person's house out from under them using fraud and we throw you in prison for 10 years. Do it with 100,000 houses from beneath the corporate veil, and we bail you out for your losses from having to relinquish the mortgage.
If not sizable fines, we should be employing "The Death Penalty", and simply revoking their corporate charter and seizing all their assets in a blanket action, when they do abhorrent things. Because, and I can't stress this enough - they aren't people, they're potentially dangerous, amoral / psychopathic algorithms which will only comply with rules to the extent that rules will be enforced in a way that destroys shareholder value.
Sometimes destruction of the business is restitution. Nothing unethical about that.
Someone saying publicly that you faked your child's death is an unforgivable insult. Money is beside the point here.
Now, most of these parents have dealt with consistent harassment of varying severity revolving around their dead kids for longer than the children have been alive in the first place. Many of these parents never even got the chance to grieve in peace before the harassment, stalking, assault and attempted murder (not sure what else a drive-by-shooting qualifies as) began.
Certainly, if any of these nutters continued to harass the parents after Jones issued a retraction, that's entirely on the nutter. But the thing about our legal definition of slander/libel is that it does take into account what happens when third parties hear and act on the slander/libel. Like, if I accuse somebody of pedophilia, and somebody else, of their own accord, murders the person I accused, the murder is considered in determining what the legal remedies are against me, even as the murderer is on the hook for the murder as such.