Posted on 08/04/2022 2:44:28 PM PDT by navysealdad
A jury in Austin ordered Alex Jones to pay $4.1 million to the parents who lost children in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School who sued the InfoWars host for defamation.
Jones was sued by the parents after the radio host and conspiracy theorist said the Sandy Hook massacre, the deadliest mass shooting at a U.S. elementary school, was “completely fake” and a “giant hoax” during a 2017 radio show. Opening statements and testimony for the trial began last week, and the jury broke for deliberations on Wednesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Insurance companies are generally smart enough to have clauses saying they don’t cover damages when you are found to have violated the law.
“This man is getting sued for exercising free speech...”
No, defamation is NOT free speech. That’s why you can’t make a “1st amendment” defense in defamation cases.
Haven’t watched the trial. What was the actual damage Jones did? Seems to me the shooter did it all.
No, defamation is NOT free speech. That’s why you can’t make a “1st amendment” defense in defamation cases.
Saying a shooting is a hoax is not defamation. What damage was done to anyone with what was said?
“Saying a shooting is a hoax is not defamation.”
Well, the jury decided it was.
And they said Biden got 81 million votes.
Defamation, as I understand it, is harming somebody’s reputation with falsehoods which the defamer knew to be false or which they recklessly presumed without making an effort to validate it. I am not sure Jones actually harmed their reputation much...just his own.
Oh sure, some people liked about something once, so let’s toss out the entire justice system!
I’m sure you have a better system to replace it with, right? Or do we go back to the days when the king came out once a month to hear pleas and sentence people to whatever whim took him?
Those parents are doing an awfully good job of acting like money-hungry grubs, trying to pad their pockets on the back of their dead children. Adam Lanza destroyed their lives, not anything Alex Jones said after the shooting.
I hate the View hosts.
Free speech, you don’t have to like it but in the USA of my birth you can say what you please. Look at the news reports about Trump, his children, his wife, concerning Russia, Ukraine, China, N Korea, “His Hotels”, which really are just Licensed to use the Trump name to bring in customers and BLING BLING it up.
No, that’s not how the dynamic of fact and opinion works.
You sound just like a Leftist. Again.
No, it doesn’t threaten the Left at all. They are completely free to do as they please, and will remain so until they are put in the ground, metaphorically speaking.
If someone sues you, YOU have to turn over your proof that you are not guilty? That’s amazing, I thought our system was built on presumption of innocence and free speech.
Where do you get those figures?
“There were no “charges”. It’s a civil suit.”
I understand that; I handled civil cases throughout my career. A “charge” in civil matters is a claim; the allegation can be either a charge or a claim (they are synonymous) of some civil wrongdoing. So, in a personal injury case (in the insurance industry, that includes libel and slander, as opposed to bodily injury or property damage, which are separate and distinct), the charge, or claim, refers to the wrongdoing, or civil tort allegedly committed by the defendant.
“The difference is the astronauts were public figures so proving a defamation case would be nearly impossible for them.”
No, it wouldn’t be nearly impossible. It actually happens regularly, but not as often as a case involving an unknown.
“But Jone was dumb enough to make his statements against people who were not public figures, so they could win their suits quite easily.”
But, what was the defamation? Did he accuse the plaintiffs, by name, of doing something that caused them actual damages? And did they prove those damages?
I just read within the last hour or so that this award was the result of a default judgment, rendered because Jones never showed up to court. Therefore, the plaintiffs didn’t have to prove squat.
It wouldn’t be okay, but you personally defamed me if you did that. Why aren’t the parents of the kids suing him, required to provide birth and death certificates in court? Piece of cake really, THEN I would say he could be sued.
“He claimed Sandy Hook was a hoax and that the grieving parents were crisis actors.”
Ah, so he said the actual parents were the crisis actors, not that actors were playing the parents.
“He’s a psychotic jerk”
He’s out there, no doubt about it.
If it’s a lie, it is. AJ is a heartless scumbag who needlessly put these families through further pain and suffering.
If my child were slaughtered and he called me a liar and a crisis actor who made it all up then I’d be happy to take his money.
“Insurance companies are generally smart enough to have clauses saying they don’t cover damages when you are found to have violated the law.”
They generally do not cover CRIMINAL violations of the law. The whole purpose of liability insurance is to cover CIVIL violations.
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