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Alex Jones must pay $4M in damages for Sandy Hook hoax claims

83 points by bramjans 4y ago

JJMcJ 4y ago
4 million in compensatory damages. Just in, jury finds 45 million in punitive damages, subject to reduction by the judge and any appeal in Jones's favor.
lalaland1125 4y ago
That's probably still a net profit for Alex Jones. According to the documents discussed in court he makes $800,000 a day from his show. If anything, he probably made more covering his own trial than what the trial cost.
- akudha 4y ago
  Jeez! 800k per day. That is obscene, for a charlatan. How much of this is profit I wonder. 4M is chump change for someone making THAT much money. Plus, who knows how much money his nut job supporters are donating to him.
  - zamalek 4y ago
    There are still punitive damages to decide, which are going to factor in his worth.
  - tmn 4y ago
    OP said 800,00 so I'm not sure if that was intended to be 800,000. But that obviously doesn't pass the BS test. Alex jones is not pulling in over 100m a year or anywhere close to that.
    - akudha 4y ago
      I have seen the 800k figure quoted elsewhere too. But even 80k per DAY is insane amount of money. Let’s say half of it is profit. 4M/40k = 100 days. For the amount of damage he has caused, for the amount of pain he has inflicted - 100 days of profit as punishment is nothing. My hope is that they clean him out of every dollar he has got. But, my guess is he’ll come out of it relatively unscathed. Even a 20M settlement might not be much to him. There are much bigger problems though - how is he able to get such a large audience? Shouldn’t these social media companies have some responsibility? Why has it taken so long for this case (years and years) to reach the verdict stage? How is he lying freely in court, to the judge, on camera, and not facing any consequences? And so on…
  - titzer 4y ago
    > That is obscene, for a charlatan. The attention economy seems to be particularly vulnerable to charlatans. Platforms are happy to take their cut as long as those eyeballs are glued and the ad profits are dollars in. They'll furrow brows and play act some carefully chosen words, but these platforms will keep giving clowns a stage, because this circus is the best yet.
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    > That is obscene, for a charlatan. The sort of people who make up his audience are, by definition, gullible, so they're a particularly valuable audience for advertisers.
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    As outlined in the trial, that was 800k/day during a specific week, he claimed that was the highest ever figure. He had previously claimed that profit was 20% of that, when pushed he said 20-40%, but documents suggest it's more like 70%. Still, that $800k/day was for a week, it can't be extrapolated over the whole year.
- bambax 4y ago
  Is this from advertising, or are people buying things directly from him? That companies would advertise their wares next to such an absolute shame of a man is beyond comprehension.
  - tennisflyi 4y ago
    Both and it ain't exactly the best wares - it's a step above penis growth ads and similar...
  - InitialLastName 4y ago
    Aren't his advertisers mostly supplements and other snake oil? It seems perfectly fitting for them to advertise with charlatans who have cultivated an angry audience whose BS filters have been strategically decimated.
- dawnerd 4y ago
  That per day figure is misleading since it was a particularly good couple of days. But yeah he still made tons of money over the years at the families’ expense.
  - pibechorro 4y ago
    Over years? Nah. He covered it, fracked up, took it back and moved on. Its the trial tha keeps it in the spotlight.
    - pwinnski 4y ago
      As revealed in the trial(s), that's not true. He continuously promoted that false story for many years, even after he first started running into legal trouble as a result.
  - frellus 4y ago
    Correct, the Plaintiff's lawyer pointed to the $800k day and said, "on average you make this" and I firmly believe Jones was confused, and tried to correct it, but the goal of the lawyer was to inflate the income numbers to maximize damages. That being said, I don't understand how they couldn't have gotten all general accounting records as part of discovery, and if they didn't why they couldn't force a forensic audit by court order.
- saint_abroad 4y ago
  > his companies were earning about $800,000 a day selling diet supplements, gun paraphernalia and survivalist equipment. It's almost as if Jones' show is a binary classification filter for chumps https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian-scammers-say-they-are-from-nigeria/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...
- dymk 4y ago
  Money isn’t much good if you can’t spend it because you’re behind bars. I look forward to the perjury charges and imprisonment.
wing-_-nuts 4y ago
I hope they throw the book at him for punitive damages as well. Maybe then people will learn you don't get to sit there spouting blatant lies without consequence. I thought forwarding his messages to the jan6 committee was just a stunt but apparently there's some juicy stuff in there. Will be interesting to see what comes out of it.
- akatechis 4y ago
  > Maybe then people will learn you don't get to sit there spouting blatant lies without consequence. That is partly true. The ruling class gets to lie with impunity whenever they want, for profit or power. Remember WMDs in Iraq? And Iran has been "6 months away from a nuclear bomb" for the past 50 years.
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    >And Iran has been "6 months away from a nuclear bomb" for the past 50 years. To be fair, that statement has always been "if Iran seriously tried to build a nuclear bomb, it'd take them roughly six months to do so." That is probably fairly true, but they've constantly lied about how serious Iran has ever been about building a nuke while using the statement stoke fears.
    - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
      To be fair, they're probably going the israeli route and have 'turn key' nukes. No way they don't have enough highly enriched material for a bomb or two by now. It's just not in their interest to advertise it.
      - boomboomsubban 4y ago
        Let's ignore how incredibly difficult that'd be given the amount of scrutiny Iran has been under for decades. We basically know Israel has nukes because testing nuclear bombs is easily detectable worldwide. There aren't any other unexplained bombs activated. If Iran secretly built one, they have next to no idea if it works or how powerful it is. So even if it wasn't nearly impossible, there's no reason to suspect they've built any. This is fairly off topic though.
Loughla 4y ago
So all the memes aside, is anyone else astounded at how poorly that went for Alex Jones? Just a shit-show nearly the entire time. From his terrible legal representation, to his own terrible testimony. Just a mess. I mean, his 'on-air' personality is a mess, but I always sort of thought it was just a show. It's interesting to me that it turned out he really is just an absolute train-wreck of a person.
- drexlspivey 4y ago
  I am astounded how someone can sit on the stand and spew lie after lie after lie under oath with no repercussions.
  - superb-owl 4y ago
    I mean...$4M is definitely a repercussion. But yeah, TBH he should probably spend time in jail.
    - nrmitchi 4y ago
      $4M is a repercussion for spending years making up conspiracy theories and targetting the families of dead children. Also note that this is compensitory damages only, and hasn't even touch on punitive damagers yet. It has nothing to do with his perjury.
      - superb-owl 4y ago
        Yeah for sure. My impression though is that the perjury played a role in the decision here though...the opposing counsel definitely made a point of highlighting it over and over.
      - khuey 4y ago
        Punitive damages are capped at low amounts in Texas and may not happen at all since they require unanimity (which the jury did not have on the compensatory verdict).
Overtonwindow 4y ago
I'm curious if it will get reduced or overturned on appeal.
- lalaland1125 4y ago
  Unlikely. Appeals are always a long shot, especially for civil cases.
- xnyan 4y ago
  In theory the law is applied without personal bias, but of course all legal officers are humans and in practice personal bias can be very relevant. The man propagated a repugnant and objectively false slander, that parents of murdered children were engaged in a performative coverup, which lead to countless death threats and other indignities against the parents. I everyone should get fair treatment under the law, but I think it’s almost impossible to imagine the nature of what he did will not influence the outcome of his trial and appeals. Also, civil cases have lower standards of proof and far fewer opportunities for a judgment to be appealed than criminal.
andsoitis 4y ago
"Speech is free, but lies you have to pay for," lawyers for the families countered in their opening arguments.
- titzer 4y ago
  Great line.
  - faangiq 4y ago
    - dang 4y ago
      Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments? You've been doing it a lot, unfortunately, and it's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Kaze404 4y ago
  This is a great line but also leads to another: "If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the poor." Interesting fact about this one: it is often attributed to the game Final Fantasy Tactics because of a meme, but it is never actually said in the game.
  - timbit42 4y ago
    Fines should be adjusted for income.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      Or adjusted for wealth.
rajup 4y ago
This is a great and a just decision, but it seems like the damages are a far cry from the $150 million claimed. Were there any sentence limits for the charges against this guy?
- Rackedup 4y ago
  Still a crazy amount....
  - rajup 4y ago
    Relative to what? The point of a punishment is to dissuade similar actions in the future. This amounts to nothing more than a slap on the wrist, and is not appropriate for the gravity of the crime.
    - Rackedup 4y ago
      They give smaller fines to mega corps for things that affect a lot more people.... I don't think 4 million is a slap on the wrist for an individual.
      - rajup 4y ago
        This “individual” has a net worth of over a $100 million so yeah a $4 million judgement is a slap on the wrist.
        Rackedup 4y ago
        I've seen other sources saying $45m: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/05/1116099506/alex-jones-infowars-sandy-hook-lies-45-million-in-punitive-damages https://www.npr.org/2022/08/05/1116099506/alex-jones-infowar... ... But why do they listen to him?
MilaM 4y ago
I'm not familiar with the legal system in the US. How much of the awarded money does the plaintiff actually receive as compensation in such a case? Do they have to share some of the awarded money with the lawyers? Also, are they also entitled to the punitive part of the damages? I'm asking because in many EU jurisdictions the equivalent of the punitive damages goes to the state or sometimes to charity organizations.
- Crosseye_Jack 4y ago
  > How much of the awarded money does the plaintiff actually receive as compensation in such a case? Do they have to share some of the awarded money with the lawyers? Depends on the agreement with the lawyers. The two main payment terms are:- A) you pay your laywer their fees no matter the outcome. In this case you keep all the money awarded to you. B) A contingency agreement. In this case you don't pay the laywer directly for their fee's however payment for your attorney's services is "contingent upon" your receiving some amount of compensation and the award is split based on the agreement. NOTE: Some types of cases can not be based on contingency for iirc ethical rules reasons. It _COULD_ be a fee based contingency agreement saying "If we win, you will pay all our fees", but the more common agreement is the award sharing agreement saying for example "If we win you agree to pay 33% of the award given". > are they also entitled to the punitive part of the damages? Yes, however often punitive awards are often capped which the jurors are not told about. So lets say X state caps punitive awards to 1 Million, but the jury gives 10 million, the punitive award is reduced to the 1 million cap.
newaccount2021 4y ago
braingenious 4y ago
This is neither here nor there but my favorite Alex Jones fun fact is that during his divorce trial he told the judge that he once ate a bowl of chili that was so big that it caused him to forget his children’s names.
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  I swear that guy should do standup comedy.
aaron695 4y ago
penguin_booze 4y ago
Why is this shown as [flagged]?
- frellus 4y ago
  False flag!
- Rackedup 4y ago
  Happens probably 1000s of times a day... when users or mods flag posts or comments (when they don't like them for one reason or another).
frellus 4y ago
I watched the entire trial. I couldn't turn it off, tt was so enlightening to watch the legal proceedings, and I learned a lot. My opinion: to be fair, (not defending Alex Jones at all), the plaintiff's lawyers did not enumerate the actual damages these poor people suffered, nor did they tie them directly to what InfoWars or Alex Jones said (i.e. he never used their names). Although I condem the things he said, if I were on the jury I would have had a hard time assigning a monetary value to something which isn't clear defamation to me. To be fair, the things he said were beyond horrible, but the case and the behavior of all representatives and the judge should be shown in law school classrooms as a reference to "don't EVER do this".
Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
"speech is free, but lies you have to pay for"

83 points by bramjans 4y ago

4 million in compensatory damages. Just in, jury finds 45 million in punitive damages, subject to reduction by the judge and any appeal in Jones's favor.

lalaland1125 4y ago

That's probably still a net profit for Alex Jones. According to the documents discussed in court he makes $800,000 a day from his show. If anything, he probably made more covering his own trial than what the trial cost.

akudha 4y ago
Jeez! 800k per day. That is obscene, for a charlatan. How much of this is profit I wonder. 4M is chump change for someone making THAT much money. Plus, who knows how much money his nut job supporters are donating to him.
- zamalek 4y ago
  There are still punitive damages to decide, which are going to factor in his worth.
- tmn 4y ago
  OP said 800,00 so I'm not sure if that was intended to be 800,000. But that obviously doesn't pass the BS test. Alex jones is not pulling in over 100m a year or anywhere close to that.
  - akudha 4y ago
    I have seen the 800k figure quoted elsewhere too. But even 80k per DAY is insane amount of money. Let’s say half of it is profit. 4M/40k = 100 days. For the amount of damage he has caused, for the amount of pain he has inflicted - 100 days of profit as punishment is nothing. My hope is that they clean him out of every dollar he has got. But, my guess is he’ll come out of it relatively unscathed. Even a 20M settlement might not be much to him. There are much bigger problems though - how is he able to get such a large audience? Shouldn’t these social media companies have some responsibility? Why has it taken so long for this case (years and years) to reach the verdict stage? How is he lying freely in court, to the judge, on camera, and not facing any consequences? And so on…
- titzer 4y ago
  > That is obscene, for a charlatan. The attention economy seems to be particularly vulnerable to charlatans. Platforms are happy to take their cut as long as those eyeballs are glued and the ad profits are dollars in. They'll furrow brows and play act some carefully chosen words, but these platforms will keep giving clowns a stage, because this circus is the best yet.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  > That is obscene, for a charlatan. The sort of people who make up his audience are, by definition, gullible, so they're a particularly valuable audience for advertisers.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  As outlined in the trial, that was 800k/day during a specific week, he claimed that was the highest ever figure. He had previously claimed that profit was 20% of that, when pushed he said 20-40%, but documents suggest it's more like 70%. Still, that $800k/day was for a week, it can't be extrapolated over the whole year.
bambax 4y ago
Is this from advertising, or are people buying things directly from him? That companies would advertise their wares next to such an absolute shame of a man is beyond comprehension.
- tennisflyi 4y ago
  Both and it ain't exactly the best wares - it's a step above penis growth ads and similar...
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  Aren't his advertisers mostly supplements and other snake oil? It seems perfectly fitting for them to advertise with charlatans who have cultivated an angry audience whose BS filters have been strategically decimated.
dawnerd 4y ago
That per day figure is misleading since it was a particularly good couple of days. But yeah he still made tons of money over the years at the families’ expense.
- pibechorro 4y ago
  Over years? Nah. He covered it, fracked up, took it back and moved on. Its the trial tha keeps it in the spotlight.
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    As revealed in the trial(s), that's not true. He continuously promoted that false story for many years, even after he first started running into legal trouble as a result.
- frellus 4y ago
  Correct, the Plaintiff's lawyer pointed to the $800k day and said, "on average you make this" and I firmly believe Jones was confused, and tried to correct it, but the goal of the lawyer was to inflate the income numbers to maximize damages. That being said, I don't understand how they couldn't have gotten all general accounting records as part of discovery, and if they didn't why they couldn't force a forensic audit by court order.
saint_abroad 4y ago
> his companies were earning about $800,000 a day selling diet supplements, gun paraphernalia and survivalist equipment. It's almost as if Jones' show is a binary classification filter for chumps https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian-scammers-say-they-are-from-nigeria/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...
dymk 4y ago
Money isn’t much good if you can’t spend it because you’re behind bars. I look forward to the perjury charges and imprisonment.

wing-_-nuts 4y ago

I hope they throw the book at him for punitive damages as well. Maybe then people will learn you don't get to sit there spouting blatant lies without consequence. I thought forwarding his messages to the jan6 committee was just a stunt but apparently there's some juicy stuff in there. Will be interesting to see what comes out of it.

akatechis 4y ago
> Maybe then people will learn you don't get to sit there spouting blatant lies without consequence. That is partly true. The ruling class gets to lie with impunity whenever they want, for profit or power. Remember WMDs in Iraq? And Iran has been "6 months away from a nuclear bomb" for the past 50 years.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  >And Iran has been "6 months away from a nuclear bomb" for the past 50 years. To be fair, that statement has always been "if Iran seriously tried to build a nuclear bomb, it'd take them roughly six months to do so." That is probably fairly true, but they've constantly lied about how serious Iran has ever been about building a nuke while using the statement stoke fears.
  - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    To be fair, they're probably going the israeli route and have 'turn key' nukes. No way they don't have enough highly enriched material for a bomb or two by now. It's just not in their interest to advertise it.
    - boomboomsubban 4y ago
      Let's ignore how incredibly difficult that'd be given the amount of scrutiny Iran has been under for decades. We basically know Israel has nukes because testing nuclear bombs is easily detectable worldwide. There aren't any other unexplained bombs activated. If Iran secretly built one, they have next to no idea if it works or how powerful it is. So even if it wasn't nearly impossible, there's no reason to suspect they've built any. This is fairly off topic though.

Loughla 4y ago

So all the memes aside, is anyone else astounded at how poorly that went for Alex Jones? Just a shit-show nearly the entire time. From his terrible legal representation, to his own terrible testimony. Just a mess. I mean, his 'on-air' personality is a mess, but I always sort of thought it was just a show. It's interesting to me that it turned out he really is just an absolute train-wreck of a person.

drexlspivey 4y ago
I am astounded how someone can sit on the stand and spew lie after lie after lie under oath with no repercussions.
- superb-owl 4y ago
  I mean...$4M is definitely a repercussion. But yeah, TBH he should probably spend time in jail.
  - nrmitchi 4y ago
    $4M is a repercussion for spending years making up conspiracy theories and targetting the families of dead children. Also note that this is compensitory damages only, and hasn't even touch on punitive damagers yet. It has nothing to do with his perjury.
    - superb-owl 4y ago
      Yeah for sure. My impression though is that the perjury played a role in the decision here though...the opposing counsel definitely made a point of highlighting it over and over.
    - khuey 4y ago
      Punitive damages are capped at low amounts in Texas and may not happen at all since they require unanimity (which the jury did not have on the compensatory verdict).

Overtonwindow 4y ago

I'm curious if it will get reduced or overturned on appeal.

lalaland1125 4y ago
Unlikely. Appeals are always a long shot, especially for civil cases.
xnyan 4y ago
In theory the law is applied without personal bias, but of course all legal officers are humans and in practice personal bias can be very relevant. The man propagated a repugnant and objectively false slander, that parents of murdered children were engaged in a performative coverup, which lead to countless death threats and other indignities against the parents. I everyone should get fair treatment under the law, but I think it’s almost impossible to imagine the nature of what he did will not influence the outcome of his trial and appeals. Also, civil cases have lower standards of proof and far fewer opportunities for a judgment to be appealed than criminal.

andsoitis 4y ago

"Speech is free, but lies you have to pay for," lawyers for the families countered in their opening arguments.

titzer 4y ago
Great line.
- faangiq 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments? You've been doing it a lot, unfortunately, and it's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Kaze404 4y ago
This is a great line but also leads to another: "If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the poor." Interesting fact about this one: it is often attributed to the game Final Fantasy Tactics because of a meme, but it is never actually said in the game.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Fines should be adjusted for income.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    Or adjusted for wealth.

rajup 4y ago

This is a great and a just decision, but it seems like the damages are a far cry from the $150 million claimed. Were there any sentence limits for the charges against this guy?

Rackedup 4y ago
Still a crazy amount....
- rajup 4y ago
  Relative to what? The point of a punishment is to dissuade similar actions in the future. This amounts to nothing more than a slap on the wrist, and is not appropriate for the gravity of the crime.
  - Rackedup 4y ago
    They give smaller fines to mega corps for things that affect a lot more people.... I don't think 4 million is a slap on the wrist for an individual.
    - rajup 4y ago
      This “individual” has a net worth of over a $100 million so yeah a $4 million judgement is a slap on the wrist.
      - Rackedup 4y ago
        I've seen other sources saying $45m: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/05/1116099506/alex-jones-infowars-sandy-hook-lies-45-million-in-punitive-damages https://www.npr.org/2022/08/05/1116099506/alex-jones-infowar... ... But why do they listen to him?

MilaM 4y ago

I'm not familiar with the legal system in the US. How much of the awarded money does the plaintiff actually receive as compensation in such a case? Do they have to share some of the awarded money with the lawyers? Also, are they also entitled to the punitive part of the damages? I'm asking because in many EU jurisdictions the equivalent of the punitive damages goes to the state or sometimes to charity organizations.

Crosseye_Jack 4y ago
> How much of the awarded money does the plaintiff actually receive as compensation in such a case? Do they have to share some of the awarded money with the lawyers? Depends on the agreement with the lawyers. The two main payment terms are:- A) you pay your laywer their fees no matter the outcome. In this case you keep all the money awarded to you. B) A contingency agreement. In this case you don't pay the laywer directly for their fee's however payment for your attorney's services is "contingent upon" your receiving some amount of compensation and the award is split based on the agreement. NOTE: Some types of cases can not be based on contingency for iirc ethical rules reasons. It _COULD_ be a fee based contingency agreement saying "If we win, you will pay all our fees", but the more common agreement is the award sharing agreement saying for example "If we win you agree to pay 33% of the award given". > are they also entitled to the punitive part of the damages? Yes, however often punitive awards are often capped which the jurors are not told about. So lets say X state caps punitive awards to 1 Million, but the jury gives 10 million, the punitive award is reduced to the 1 million cap.

newaccount2021 4y ago

braingenious 4y ago

This is neither here nor there but my favorite Alex Jones fun fact is that during his divorce trial he told the judge that he once ate a bowl of chili that was so big that it caused him to forget his children’s names.

_fat_santa 4y ago
I swear that guy should do standup comedy.

aaron695 4y ago

penguin_booze 4y ago

Why is this shown as [flagged]?

frellus 4y ago
False flag!
Rackedup 4y ago
Happens probably 1000s of times a day... when users or mods flag posts or comments (when they don't like them for one reason or another).

frellus 4y ago

I watched the entire trial. I couldn't turn it off, tt was so enlightening to watch the legal proceedings, and I learned a lot. My opinion: to be fair, (not defending Alex Jones at all), the plaintiff's lawyers did not enumerate the actual damages these poor people suffered, nor did they tie them directly to what InfoWars or Alex Jones said (i.e. he never used their names). Although I condem the things he said, if I were on the jury I would have had a hard time assigning a monetary value to something which isn't clear defamation to me. To be fair, the things he said were beyond horrible, but the case and the behavior of all representatives and the judge should be shown in law school classrooms as a reference to "don't EVER do this".

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago

"speech is free, but lies you have to pay for"