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> 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
by 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 agoNot if they have to put up actual cash...
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoDo 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 agoDid you read the article? That's exactly what they did.
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoDid 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.
- freejazz 2y agoHence the if
- intended 2y agoOnce secret bids are known, and the auction is conducted again, usually the party with the biggest pockets then just wades in and takes it. Once the price is known, several parties tend to walk away.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago> Once the price is known, several parties tend to walk away. This is why you disclose the current winning bid, which will be <minimum bid increment> over the second highest current bid. If that's already more than you're willing to pay then you weren't going to win anyway. If it isn't, you can put in your bid and then the previous winning bidder has to outbid you again. Which they might do, but you don't know that and until the bid is above what you're willing to pay you don't lose anything by placing bids which as far as you know might actually win.
- alwa 2y agoThat's what they did, and that's what was rejected here, right? Although it sounds like maybe this was more of a procedural rejection than a dispositive one...
- logifail 2y ago> That's what they did, and that's what was rejected here, right? Except they weren't the highest bidder?
- alwa 2y agoThey were if you count the amount they claimed to be putting in from their award: “The total value of The Onion’s bid was $7 million, including $1.75 million in cash put up by Global Tetrahedron, with the rest coming from the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, who essentially opted to put a portion of their potential earnings from a defamation judgment against Mr. Jones toward The Onion’s bid.”
- pclmulqdq 2y agoTheir bid was essentially "something that economically feels like $100k more than the next highest bidder to people who aren't us" which is a clever contractual construction but not an auction bid.