That's not obvious to me at all. Can a 9-figure media and supplements company inflict 25-50 million dollars on an individual? Sure they can. Selling the memory of a parent's murdered child and defaming them to the point where they are followed into different states by lunatics threatening their lives seems to easily cross that threshold. How disruptive would it be to my life if that happened to me? Over how many years? It's a huge amount of baseline injury, and then it's multiplied by the demonstrable profits earned by Free Speech Systems at their expense.
Remember, it's almost a billion dollars because twenty children were murdered at Sandy Hook, and Jones' company managed to target all of the parents. If only one parent had sued, we wouldn't be batting an eyelash at the resulting damages. But Jones built an immensely powerful media machine, and then aimed it very carefully at his own testicles. Play stupid games, &c &c.
Well, to be frank, it doesn't matter. Some people probably think any kind of damages for defamation are ridiculous. Others probably think this wasn't enough. It doesn't matter though, because you weren't selected to serve on the jury at the trial. You didn't see the evidence, you didn't get to observe jones' conduct, you didn't sit through days and days of testimony about how horrible and traumatic it was for the families of sandy hook to lose their children and then be called 'crisis actors' by Alex Jones repeatedly. His followers were literally harassing the parents in public.
These damages may be above average and the highest ever in a defamation trial, but Alex Jones really took being a defamatory piece of shit to a new level.
People seemed to have no problem with the idea that Oberlin could have inflicted $36MM against a family. I didn't either! That's how tort damages work.
The Oberlin case had damages of $25 million, not $36 million, and that was the combined award to number of individuals plus a company that suffered a significant loss of revenue.
Apples & oranges again? Hogan is a public figure who might actually lose out on a hundred mil due to reputation damage. A average middle class USA family, not so much.
Anyway if it isn't punitive shouldn't there be some kind of account for how the number was arrived at? I don't see it in the article.
> If only one parent had sued, we wouldn't be batting an eyelash at the resulting damages.
This is not really a convincing response to my comment on the per-family damages:
>> Nobody involved had a reputation that was worth $100 million dollars.
You can't lose value you never had.
> How disruptive would it be to my life if that happened to me? Over how many years?
However disruptive it was, the damages could not reach $100 million unless you either (a) spent $100 million dealing with the disruption, or (b) forwent $100 million of earnings in order to deal with the disruption. (Or any combination.) Again, that hasn't happened. You can't deal $100 million of economic damage to someone who doesn't possess assets worth $100 million. That is a major reason for the concept of punitive damages.
"You can't lose value you never had" isn't a coherent argument. People are routinely awarded damages far greater than their net worths for all sorts of torts. By the logic you're using, if I go to Starbucks and steal the eyeballs out of the barista, I'm only asymptotically on the hook for a lifetime's worth of barista earnings.
I think you'd find --- criminal liability aside --- that you'd be on the hook for more than the lifetime earnings of a Starbucks barista and the cost of medical care and a seeing eye dog.
You sound very sure of this, but I am less sure. Disgorgement is a remedy, in US law, for torts in general. Damages are especially constrained in defamation claims, because of the first amendment, but defamation is just one of five claims against Jones, all of which he was found guilty of --- intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, false light invasion of privacy, and, most notably, violating the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices act.
I'm not saying I'm sure these numbers will hold up (punitive damages under CUTPA are uncapped, though!), but I think the story about how the jury could have reached these numbers is a lot more complicated than you're making it out to be.
In particular:
(1) It's not just defamation.
(2) You do not in fact need to make a "claim for unjust enrichment" to recover profits earned through an intentional tort.
> You do not in fact need to make a "claim for unjust enrichment" to recover profits earned through an intentional tort.
I would need a lot more than your assertion to be convinced of this. Here's Ward Farnsworth introducing his book, Restitution: Civil Liability for Unjust Enrichment:
> Restitution is the mirror image of tort law. You sue in tort to recover for losses that you have suffered. You bring a restitution claim to recover gains that another party has obtained. In some cases it makes no difference which claim you bring, because your losses and the other side's gains are the same. Or you might prefer a tort claim because your losses are bigger than the defendant's gains, as usually is true when you suffer damage in an accident. But sometimes going after the defendant's gains will allow a much bigger recovery, or is the plaintiff's only way to recover at all.
> Restitution is the great overlooked topic in American private law. In this country most students can't learn about it even if they want to; few schools teach the subject. Students only hear about restitution as the name of an occasional remedy in contract cases. But restitution is the name of a claim, not just a remedy. So lawyers often overlook restitution and sometimes try to use tort and contract to solve problems that restitution law would handle better. Missing or misunderstanding the right to go after a defendant's gains can be a very expensive oversight.
(From the piece: "The jury awarded plaintiff $500,000 for defamation, and $1,345,477.25 on the unjust enrichment theory.")
Why would he do that, if it were just part of how all torts are handled? What would be unusual about it? (And why would Ward Farnsworth introduce the subject by pointing out that "tort claims and restitution claims are opposite things"?)
It’s not about what the reputation was worth, it is about what he made off it. The point of the justice system is to set a precedent, if the damages are too low, you just set a precedent where lawsuits are just business expenses and you can still make money off these things.
Nobody involved had a reputation that was worth $100 million dollars.