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Isn't it a little strange, though, that the system notionally decided that the families are owed an enormous amount of economic power as compensation for the na

• acomjean 2y ago
  Selling to a business involved with the individual that lost in court.. It seems like a Fraudulent Conveyance to my non lawyer self (but I could be wrong) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraudulent_conveyance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraudulent_conveyance
  • rfw300 2y ago
    It's not a good outcome, but it's also not fraudulent conveyance. Principally because the proceeds of the sale go to the victims.
    • ipaddr 2y ago
      They go to the creditors including his primary sponsor. This is not a bad outcome it's the only correct legal outcome. What you are saying is we should allow a creditor (of many) to sell an asset to whoever they choose at a lower market rate because it's the right political move in this one case. Why wouldn't those rules be applied in other cases.. you can sell any asset for a dollar to yourself and the bankrupt person will still be on the hook for the total debt minus a dollar. Letting a single creditor value assets below marketrate and direct a sale to someone they wanted would be a completely unfair process.
      • redeux 2y ago
        This isn’t about politics, it’s about justice. The only reason politics is even in the equation is because Jones has made his living as a political blatherskite.
        • johnnyanmac 2y ago
          Law is almost inherently poliical. Politics was in the equation the moment Jones decided to pretend a tragic school shooting was fake news.
          • redeux 2y ago
            So where is justice in this equation then?
            • johnnyanmac 2y ago
              The plantiffs getting compensated is the "justice". The courts ruled wrongdoing and the consequence is some sort of payout.
              • redeux 2y ago
                That’s a legal remedy not justice. Justice wouldn’t let Jones potentially buy back the company using money the siphoned off and hid from the court.
                • johnnyanmac 2y ago
                  I agree. I never said there weren't loopholes in the remedy. We'll see if they manage to close it off.
      • pyrale 2y ago
        That is not what happened, though. One group of creditors said they were willing to abandon some of their claims, which means other creditors would have gotten a larger share of the smaller bid, effectively making these other creditors better off.
    • avs733 2y ago
      >A transfer will be fraudulent if made with actual intent to hinder, delay, or defraud any creditor. If they get it less, later, or more chaotically, or if that was the intent it is.
    • munk-a 2y ago
      The proceeds of the sale will not come close to the value of the judgement - and Jones has acted extremely dishonestly through the process and repeatedly tried to move value from his company to his parents and other affiliate companies. I don't believe it's a fraudulent conveyance but there's a lot of awful happening here.
  • citizenkeen 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • pclmulqdq 2y ago
    The fraudulent conveyance may have been the move of the vitamin company itself, but the purchase in bankruptcy wouldn't be a fraudulent transation.
    • paulryanrogers 2y ago
      Letting Jones buy back his 'bankrupt' assets using money he fraudulently hid goes against the spirit of the law, even in the purchasing phase. This guy should be living in his parents basement and barred from publishing on any significant media platforms. He's proven willing to exploit victims for personal gain to the tune of the millions of dollars.
      • noworriesnate 2y ago
        Why? The creditors still get paid regardless.
        • paulryanrogers 2y ago
          Why should Jones be stopped from hiding assets from bankruptcy? Or why should he be prohibited from profiting from exploitation of crime victims via broadcast platforms? Regardless of whether victims get paid money, they were harmed emotionally by Jones's outsourced harassment. They don't need money. They need justice in the form of peace from harassment. And Jones seems set on exploiting them and the courts for his own enrichment.
          • grepfru_it 2y ago
            Very odd that the judge didn’t write his or her reasoning in his ruling..
  • cyanydeez 2y ago
    Unfortunately, norms aren't going to stop this company from reharming it's victims.
• ipaddr 2y ago
  They have a debt judgement not economic power. They can sell that debit judgement to a company who collects. They can take the money from the result of the court process and try to buy infowars after this is all over. They don't have a judgement of ownership in infowars they have a debt and the court is forcing Alex to sell all assets to cover the debt. Then the rest is written off and he gets a black mark on his credit report. There are rules around this process for a reason. If you allowed someone who has a debt judgement to just take over a company what is it's true value. Alex could try to value infowars at a trillion. So they put it up for an auction to get the real value. That's the fairest way for all cases. Besides others are in line as well. And killing the infowars brand means little in the short/long run. The real brand is Alex's name. It's not like his audience will suddenly not follow him to a new show with a new name.
  • Retric 2y ago
    > So they put it up for an auction to get the real value. Except Onion’s bid minimized Alex Jones debt and was the preferred outcome by his creditors. Offering more cash isn’t the same as making a larger bid here.
    • pclmulqdq 2y ago
      It was the preferred outcome by the majority of his creditors, not by all his creditors (note that preferred != economically best). If the creditors were unanimous in their preferences, there would be no issue before the court.
      • Retric 2y ago
        No the judge stated he believes it could be sold at a higher price not that the deal wasn’t structured properly. There’s been confusion on the math. Because one party was forgoing a portion of their share everyone else not just the other victims would be better off financially. ps: Economic maximization alone isn’t relevant here. The underlying economic value matters when individuals aren’t voluntarily participating in a transaction. If I destroy your car then I owe you based on the cars worth, but if you trade in your car moderately under blue book perhaps you’re just in a hurry.
• wakawaka28 2y ago
  There was no public auction of InfoWars. That alone is a stain on the whole process. The objective of a bankruptcy court is not to institute some arbitrary meta-ethical standard. It is to deliver maximum cash to the creditors in a fair manner. >Is the issue that there are other creditors who are unhappy with this, who would get paid before the aggrieved families' damages would? The lawyers seem to be fine with it, as they're the ones advocating for this plan... Based on discussions I've heard on this subject, a subset of the families was pledging money they didn't have in the non-competitive bidding. This is highly questionable. They may never receive the money they claim for the purchase. So by buying a real asset on the promise of money they aren't going to get, it is taking money away from other people who are rightfully owed money. If they wanted to do it the right way they could try to borrow the money from someone, but nobody in their right mind thinks Alex Jones has this money or ever did. The size of the judgement was calculated to lead to exactly this conclusion. As you said, the judgement was orders of magnitude more than the value of his company. So you should be satisfied with that. It is not necessary for the funniest possible outcome to manifest in order for justice to be served. Alex Jones will not go away because he has rights just like anyone else, and the legal process must conclude eventually.
  • avs733 2y ago
    > There was no public auction of InfoWars. That alone is a stain on the whole process. The objective of a bankruptcy court is not to institute some arbitrary meta-ethical standard. It is to deliver maximum cash to the creditors in a fair manner. Again, maximimum value not cash.
    • wakawaka28 2y ago
      I say cash loosely speaking. You at least cannot pledge income from debt that is presently being negotiated down or cancelled. That kind of thing isn't "value" because it's imaginary.
      • avs733 2y ago
        but you can pledge the debt itself.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• avianlyric 2y ago
  > Is the issue that there are other creditors who are unhappy with this, who would get paid before the aggrieved families' damages would? The lawyers seem to be fine with it, as they're the ones advocating for this plan... Nope. Under the rejected deal, other creditors would have seen a larger payout, because aggrieved families are actual two separate groups. One with a claim near a billion dollars, and other with a claim of only a few million (I think, it may be less). As a result the aggrieved families with the larger claim were set to basically hoover up all the cash from the bankruptcy, and the deal with the Onion was to create a better deal for the other families by having the larger claim reduced to allow a fair split of the total cash raised.
  • cogman10 2y ago
    Also of note, the other creditors agreed to this bid.
• fennecfoxy 2y ago
  Nah it's just typical rich people getting away with everything stuff & we'll continue to let it happen because we are hapless.
  • StefanBatory 2y ago
    It does really appear that America's getting her own, homegrown oligarchs.
    • NoGravitas 2y ago
      We've had them for a long time; basically the only time we've tried to reduce their power was the Great Depression and post-WWII era, but since the 70s we've been letting them off the leash.
      • entropicdrifter 2y ago
        Correct. 10/10 summary
    • ceejayoz 2y ago
      Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller... we've had them.
      • paulryanrogers 2y ago
        They've mostly kept a low profile since the Great Depression though. And plenty would be oligarchs were taxed out of the upper class by the WW2 tax brackets.
        • etc-hosts 2y ago
          The families that lost their wealth in the Civil War and the families who had to pay a little more tax because of the New Deal and the people still mad about LBJ era civil rights legislation have all banded together.
    • 2y ago
• AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > I have to say, just as a matter of gut instinct, it sure feels like when the court finds that Alex Jones damaged people—at a value orders of magnitude beyond that of his company—those people should be allowed to decide that, to them, there's value in snuffing out his ill-behaving company altogether. It seems like there's an easy way for them to do that though: Just bid on it themselves and dispose of it however they want. They can bid arbitrarily high because they're the ones who get the money, if they want to dismantle the company or sell it to The Onion more than they want the money from what would otherwise be the highest bidder.
  • freejazz 2y ago
    Not if they have to put up actual cash...
    • AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      Do they though? Put up that portion of the debt owed to them by the estate, which should be valued in at least that amount.
      • freejazz 2y ago
        Did you read the article? That's exactly what they did.
        • AnthonyMouse 2y ago
          Did you read the article? Jones was arguing that the families shouldn't be able to do that but the article doesn't say anything about whether he won that argument and the only reason it specifies for why the judge rejected the sale is this: > Judge Lopez said that the bankruptcy auction failed to maximize the amount of money that the sale of Infowars should provide to Mr. Jones’s creditors, including the Sandy Hook families, in part because the bids were submitted in secret. Which implies they might just be able to redo the auction without secret bids and get the same result.
• NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  >Isn't it a little strange, though, that the system notionally decided that the families are owed an enormous amount of economic power as compensation for the nasty behavior of Alex Jones' media company, but at the same time it's obliging them not to use that economic power to prevent the sale of the media company to a "new owner" still affiliated with an unrepentant Alex Jones, who will undoubtedly continue the nasty behavior? Just in order to get cash to compensate them at pennies on the dollar for his previous round of nasty behavior? This is regrettable, but I don't think the court system offers a remedy sufficient for the grief Jones caused. This is why the court awarded what is frankly an absurd sum... truly, what is the point of awarding numbers that large? They're never paid out. There this a strict defamation case, where the plaintiff's reputations were actually damaged in a way that harmed their income/worth, then we'd likely have seen a more rational award. Whatever it was that Jones did to these people, it's not the same tort as defamation. In that, he calls them embezzlers or pedos or something, they lose their jobs... and we can put a number to the damage he inflicted. Instead, he claimed they were actors, they never had any children, and this was some sort of hoax. Had crazy people coming out of the woodwork to harass them and stalk them. But the only sort of court order that could remediate that would be one that muzzles Jones from saying this shit... prior restraint. Something the Constitution wouldn't allow for. I actually wonder if what he did shouldn't be characterized as a crime instead of a tort. Were he prosecuted and imprisoned (or even just put on probation), then the government would have the authority/leverage to (temporarily) prohibit this speech. Even then, he'd be made a martyr by his fans and it would continue as soon as the sentence was served.
• ljsprague 2y ago
  $1.5 billion is more than Exxon paid for the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Alex Jones must have been really nasty.
  • etc-hosts 2y ago
    I don't know everything but I visited Valdez once and the locals told me Exxon wrote the 1.5 billion off of their taxable income so ended up not being punished.
    • gregw2 2y ago
      The locals are right to be pissed. But the logic seems a bit flawed... when you spend 2.1 billion in funding and then write it off on taxes, you are not saving 2.1 billion, you are saving YourTaxRate% of 2.1 billion, right? The environment is lucky that it was Exxon who made the mistake of hiring an incompetent and overworked crew (per NTSB); they had more resources to deal with the consequences of an (allegedly?) drunk captain than smaller firms. I had a PhD relative working at Exxon whose work was halted and spent a year or two of his life working on the mess; not sure if that was part of the 2.1 billion or in addition to it. Certainly there was non-financial opportunity cost not even measured. Like "Fire safety codes written in blood", the international requirement for oil tankers to have double hulls ensued.