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I'm not going to dig up the transcripts, but I was following this pretty closely when it happened. If memory serves right, Jones was given several chances to co

by skulk 2y ago

I'm not going to dig up the transcripts, but I was following this pretty closely when it happened. If memory serves right, Jones was given several chances to comply with discovery requests and was constantly attempting to misdirect and otherwise disrupt the proceedings. It's not like the court balked at the first weird thing the defense did and immediately entered into a default judgement. I believe the default judgement is the only thing that makes any sense in this case. The courts aren't there to play games with people like Jones. edit: I dug up the judgement anyways. Take a look and tell me if any of this isn't reasonable. How many more chances do you think Jones deserves here? https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21074211-alex-jones-default-judgment-orders-texas/ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21074211-alex-jones-... > The Court now finds that a default judgment on liability should be granted. The Court finds that Defendants’ discovery conduct in this case has shown flagrant bad faith and callous disregard for the responsibilities of discovery under the rules. The Court finds Defendants’ conduct is greatly aggravated by the consistent pattern of discovery abuse throughout the other Sandy Hook cases pending before this Court. Prior to the discovery abuse in this case, Defendants also violated this Court’s discovery orders in Lewis v. Jones, et al. ... and Heslin v. Jones, et al. .... After next violating the October 18, 2019 discovery order in this case, Defendants also failed to timely answer discovery in Pozner v. Jones, et al. ..., another Sandy Hook lawsuit, as well as Fontaine v. InfoWars, LLC, et al. ..., a similar lawsuit involving Defendants’ publications

busterarm 2y ago
Parties play games in cases of this nature all the time. Court battles like this can be bitter. Perjury is a criminal charge. Contempt is an option to. Judges use the lever of jail time to deal with situations like this all the time (again, direct experience here -- a surrogate court judge put two 70+ year old ladies in Rikers for a month for failing to comply with the court repeatedly over years). Going to default was exceptional behavior that nobody shed a tear for because it's Alex Jones. Edit: To answer your question > How many more chances do you think Jones deserves here? If you're looking to make a political statement, sure none. If you're looking to have a fair trial, there's still steps A, B and C. Even the fact that he had to fight all those cases for the same thing separately is a deliberate step to fuck him. Then the court treating giving the same data in each trial as a separate offense is certainly cherry-picking. I'm not really complaining though because the concept of a fair trial does not exist. Civil or criminal. Do whatever you can not to end up in court. It always boils down to who has the most resources and the appetite for battle. Some pockets (like the state's) are near-infinite.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
busterarm 2y ago
Wanted a separate post for this comment -- I have never, ever seen a judge use contempt or a default judgment (against someone represented in court) without directly threatening to use that power first.
JacobThreeThree 2y ago
>given several chances to comply with discovery requests The Jones side claims that these discovery requests were for documents that don't exist. The linked judgement provides no detail on what the specific discovery requests were that went unanswered. Do you know what the discovery requests were for specifically?
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  No, I do not know. But I know that "that document doesn't exist" is a valid response to a discovery request. Silence is not a valid response, even if the document doesn't exist. (If one side falsely claims the document doesn't exist, the other side then can present evidence to the judge that the document does in fact exist, and that the first side is withholding evidence. If you play that game and get caught, various bad things can happen to you. The judge can look more skeptically at everything you say thereafter, the judge can rule that the other side is entitled to assuming the contents of the document are whatever would be most damaging to your side's case, you or your lawyers can be fined, and your lawyers can be disbarred. Judges deal with this kind of stuff all the time; detecting and blocking such games is a major part of what they do.)
  - JacobThreeThree 2y ago
    The judgement document does not go into any detail therefore we don't know whether the Jones team responded with "these documents don't exist" or not. If that was their position, why wouldn't they have responded to that effect? There would be no motivation to do otherwise. The rest of your post is speculation.
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      skulk updated their post upthread to include an actual quote from the judgment. That says quite enough. It doesn't have to list specifics of a repeated, flagrant, bad-faith pattern of attempts to disrupt discovery; the rest of the record of the case will do so, in detail after detail after detail.

by skulk 2y ago

busterarm 2y ago

Parties play games in cases of this nature all the time. Court battles like this can be bitter. Perjury is a criminal charge. Contempt is an option to. Judges use the lever of jail time to deal with situations like this all the time (again, direct experience here -- a surrogate court judge put two 70+ year old ladies in Rikers for a month for failing to comply with the court repeatedly over years). Going to default was exceptional behavior that nobody shed a tear for because it's Alex Jones. Edit: To answer your question > How many more chances do you think Jones deserves here? If you're looking to make a political statement, sure none. If you're looking to have a fair trial, there's still steps A, B and C. Even the fact that he had to fight all those cases for the same thing separately is a deliberate step to fuck him. Then the court treating giving the same data in each trial as a separate offense is certainly cherry-picking. I'm not really complaining though because the concept of a fair trial does not exist. Civil or criminal. Do whatever you can not to end up in court. It always boils down to who has the most resources and the appetite for battle. Some pockets (like the state's) are near-infinite.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

busterarm 2y ago

Wanted a separate post for this comment -- I have never, ever seen a judge use contempt or a default judgment (against someone represented in court) without directly threatening to use that power first.

JacobThreeThree 2y ago

>given several chances to comply with discovery requests The Jones side claims that these discovery requests were for documents that don't exist. The linked judgement provides no detail on what the specific discovery requests were that went unanswered. Do you know what the discovery requests were for specifically?

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
No, I do not know. But I know that "that document doesn't exist" is a valid response to a discovery request. Silence is not a valid response, even if the document doesn't exist. (If one side falsely claims the document doesn't exist, the other side then can present evidence to the judge that the document does in fact exist, and that the first side is withholding evidence. If you play that game and get caught, various bad things can happen to you. The judge can look more skeptically at everything you say thereafter, the judge can rule that the other side is entitled to assuming the contents of the document are whatever would be most damaging to your side's case, you or your lawyers can be fined, and your lawyers can be disbarred. Judges deal with this kind of stuff all the time; detecting and blocking such games is a major part of what they do.)
- JacobThreeThree 2y ago
  The judgement document does not go into any detail therefore we don't know whether the Jones team responded with "these documents don't exist" or not. If that was their position, why wouldn't they have responded to that effect? There would be no motivation to do otherwise. The rest of your post is speculation.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    skulk updated their post upthread to include an actual quote from the judgment. That says quite enough. It doesn't have to list specifics of a repeated, flagrant, bad-faith pattern of attempts to disrupt discovery; the rest of the record of the case will do so, in detail after detail after detail.