A Texas court has slashed a $50 million judgment against Infowars founder Alex Jones to about $6 million over falsely calling the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut, school shootings a hoax.
Not… quiet. These are punitive damages - above and beyond the assessed monetary damages inflicted by Jones.
As a comparison, let’s say you own a car. Your neighbor, in a fit of piqued, drops a cartoon anvil on the hood and totals it. The car costs you $30k to replace. And there’s a second order cost on you for not having your own car that you can calculate out to be another $30k.
But the jury doesn’t believe a $60k award is sufficient to justify the harm your neighbor caused. So they want to assess “punitive” addition costs in excess of the discrete monetary damage. They cannot assign a number bigger than $750k for this claim.
If your neighbor can come up with a way to make $750k + 30k + 30k of demolishing your car, then they have an economic incentive to do it.
But if the neighbor burns down your $800k house? Or drives a Killdozer through your $1.5M front office? Or puts a 757 through one of your twin towers? Then there’s a much higher liability.
Yeah, I suppose I’m going with the actual losses being an assumed cost too. I guess a simple way might be steal $1B, make $1M off it before being brought to court, pay back the $1B and $750K punitive amount, walk off with $250K profit.
Unless they allow someone to collect for potential gains missed due to the theft and provide a suitable deterrent in punitive amounts it basically comes down to paying back the raw losses and up to $750K
I guess a simple way might be steal $1B, make $1M off it
The courts generally recognize the time-value of money. If you steal $1 and make $.10 on it, then you’ve deprived the person you stole from of the same ROI. In fact, you’ve demonstrated the deprived returns by investing it.
Unless they allow someone to collect for potential gains
So, back to the car example. If you deprive someone of a car and that costs them their job, you’re liable for the wages they lost when they lost their job.
This is a great example where th punitive damages are the inportant part. I’m sure they argued there were no direct monetary damage and how do upsi quantify such a thing anyway.
The analogy is what if someone vandalized your car and came back every night to keep vandalizing it, and accosted you as a liar in public, and attacked your employer to get you fired, and told everyone they could that you were the problem? Now imagine it wasn’t a car but your child that you lost
Not… quiet. These are punitive damages - above and beyond the assessed monetary damages inflicted by Jones.
As a comparison, let’s say you own a car. Your neighbor, in a fit of piqued, drops a cartoon anvil on the hood and totals it. The car costs you $30k to replace. And there’s a second order cost on you for not having your own car that you can calculate out to be another $30k.
But the jury doesn’t believe a $60k award is sufficient to justify the harm your neighbor caused. So they want to assess “punitive” addition costs in excess of the discrete monetary damage. They cannot assign a number bigger than $750k for this claim.
If your neighbor can come up with a way to make $750k + 30k + 30k of demolishing your car, then they have an economic incentive to do it.
But if the neighbor burns down your $800k house? Or drives a Killdozer through your $1.5M front office? Or puts a 757 through one of your twin towers? Then there’s a much higher liability.
Kalshi has entered the chat
Yeah, I suppose I’m going with the actual losses being an assumed cost too. I guess a simple way might be steal $1B, make $1M off it before being brought to court, pay back the $1B and $750K punitive amount, walk off with $250K profit.
Unless they allow someone to collect for potential gains missed due to the theft and provide a suitable deterrent in punitive amounts it basically comes down to paying back the raw losses and up to $750K
The courts generally recognize the time-value of money. If you steal $1 and make $.10 on it, then you’ve deprived the person you stole from of the same ROI. In fact, you’ve demonstrated the deprived returns by investing it.
So, back to the car example. If you deprive someone of a car and that costs them their job, you’re liable for the wages they lost when they lost their job.
This is a great example where th punitive damages are the inportant part. I’m sure they argued there were no direct monetary damage and how do upsi quantify such a thing anyway.
The analogy is what if someone vandalized your car and came back every night to keep vandalizing it, and accosted you as a liar in public, and attacked your employer to get you fired, and told everyone they could that you were the problem? Now imagine it wasn’t a car but your child that you lost
There are conditions where the cap is waived and this doesn’t meet them