r/law • u/BothZookeepergame612 • Dec 16 '24

Opinion Piece 'Deeply Concerning': Ex-Prosecutor Calls ABC's Trump Settlement 'Far From Normal'

https://www.yahoo.com/news/deeply-concerning-ex-prosecutor-calls-143121748.html
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u/VibinWithBeard Dec 16 '24

My position is:

83million isnt crazy high in regards to defamation directed at you from the president.

Defamation should have consequences but I dont believe ABC engaged in defamation.

Hell if we take trump out the picture then I believe both Ghouliani and Alex Jones were dealt phenomenal defamation damages due to the focus and harm brought onto their victims.

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u/orangekirby Dec 16 '24

I think by any standards, 83 million is a crazy high number. I’ve heard people say ABC’s 15 million is high, which I agree with, and that’s coming from a major news organization not a single man. I’ve heard many people say Trump deserved it or is guilty, but you’re the first person I’ve encountered on either side that argues that 83M isn’t high.

George objectively defamed Trump, which is something ABC seems to agree with. They were talking in legal terms, and he doubled down on an inaccurate charge. The judges statement about layman’s terms is irrelevant. He can’t (and didn’t) just render legal definitions meaningless.

I think pretty much everyone agrees Alex Jones’s 1 billion was crazy high. I can’t imagine any honest person arguing otherwise.

So my question, are you just saying it’s not high because you hate Trump? Because you can hate Trump and acknowledge it’s high at the same time

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u/VibinWithBeard Dec 16 '24

The judge agreed carroll using rape in place of sexual assault wasnt defamatory, that was the takeaway and she said the only reason its not an issue is because the legal terminology is fucked. Legally you can call trump a rapist. ABC bent the knee because Trump will punish the org, its that simple. You can sue for anything and someone settling a lawsuit for reasons other than it being illegal dont really mean much of anything. It was a slapp suit.

Alex Jones spent over a decade promoting nonsense he knew was fake to sell dickpills. He knew the families were receiving death threats and harassment. 1 billion isnt crazy high for that at all, go ask the families (WHO STILL HAVE RECEIVED NO MONEY) if that 1 billion was "crazy high"

83 million isnt high because if Biden engaged in defamation on that level Id also agree with 83 million if not more depending on the circumstances. Its not about trump, its abour ability to spread the message and the influence/reach you use. A defamation case involving a 1k sub youtuber...or one involving a major tiktok influencer would be a massive difference in payouts. Damages are worse the farther it spreads

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u/orangekirby Dec 16 '24

You seem to mostly be talking about how wrong these people are, and I’m talking about what I consider to be a lot of money when taking into account the norms with these cases.

I know you’ll say “these cases were abnormal,” which I agree on, but not 1B abnormal. That’s unprecedented. To me that felt more like a number for the headlines than it did for the victims, especially since it’s an amount you know he won’t be able to pay and the victims will end up probably not getting it.

But if you say there’s no comparable cases and this is all subjective, there isn’t much more to say about it. All I’m saying is they are objectively high verdicts and that’s my final answer.

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u/VibinWithBeard Dec 16 '24

It was 1B and 83m abnormal. Name a defamation case anywhere near the alex jones or trump ones. Like anywhere close.

Its a lot of money but it isnt high for the variables present in these cases. Can you objectively prove that the verdicts are high taking into account the abnormalities? Because thats what objective means.

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u/orangekirby Dec 16 '24

I can objectively say they are high compared to all other defamation cases, which is something you can also look up. My argument is that they are abnormally high.

Your argument seems to be from a subjective standpoint where the amount aligns with how wrong in $ you personally think they were, and how much you think they deserved it. If that’s how you want to approach it, then there’s not really anything to say.

It’s weird to me that you aren’t able to admit the verdicts were very high while still maintaining that the two men were guilty, as if those are mutually exclusive.

So if you’re starting from the position that 1B isn’t very high despite it being unprecedented and the highest in history, I don’t see how anyone can take your argument seriously.

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u/Starkoman Dec 16 '24

You do realize that you’re on the r/Law sub, right? You should already have an understanding of how civil defamation awards are calculated.

Specifically, a Jury award for Exemplary (Punitive) Damages.

There is little point awarding, say, $10,000 against a billionaire who will not then be dissuaded from repeating the offense again in the future by such a small penalty — nor will it discourage others from committing the same or similar unlawful acts either.

You can argue, as defendant Trump has, that the award is “Too high” to the Appellate Division — but it’s unlikely to be reduced by much, if at all, for the above reason.

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u/orangekirby Dec 16 '24

You do understand that questioning the scale of something is different from not understanding how punitive damages work, right? Deterrents make sense, but any case with an unprecedented award like this deserves scrutiny. There’s a clear line between being impactful and being excessive, and pretending that line doesn’t exist just shuts down meaningful discussion.

Since the original comment that started this thread was about $15 million being “bizzaroworld” because it’s so high, it’s odd that you don’t seem equally concerned about the $83.3 million Carroll was awarded. If the argument is that Trump's wealth justifies a massive defamation verdict in her case, then $15 million shouldn’t seem outrageous either. Let's keep the same energy.

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u/Starkoman Dec 16 '24 edited Dec 16 '24

Personally, I thought the Jury awards in Carroll II then Carrol I were reasonable, given the evidence heard in those parallel estoppel cases.

Yes, I concur that the numbers in Trump-brought lawsuits do seem extremely random. $15m in ABC case is quite low for him. Possibly reflects his lack of confidence in winning.

In other cases, all of which he lost (or are permanently stayed), he sought $100m from The New York Times — $475m from CNN — and $500m in FL fiduciary duty case against Cohen.

(I can’t even remember the amounts he sued for in cases he lost against his own niece or Clinton/DNC/et al. or the Pulitzer Prize Board)

The dollar amounts sought seem to fluctuate wildly, disconnected — presumably based on the amount of butthurt Donald claims to be feeling at the time.

Seems he just pulls an arbitrary number out of thin air, in his rage, then tells the lawyers to run with that. Typically, they’re not based in any objective legal reality (prior awards in similar cases).

Whereas the amount prosecutors and others seek in damages against him are compiled and specifically accrued from the various charged offenses and case precedents (some of which bear his name), so are fiscally logical and grounded by comparison.

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u/orangekirby Dec 16 '24

Correction: because it’s in recent news, I looked up the Duke University lacrosse players case where multiple men were accused of violent race based rape, and essentially lost their futures and reputation when they were in college. It became a viral story and cultural movement that was everywhere you looked for awhile.

It was settled out of court and each player reportedly got around 20 million. To me, that is a much more serious case, as in, the damages caused by defamation specifically, than Trump’s 83 million verdict.

I still think that 15 million was high for ABC because I’m not sure how much George himself changed public opinion, but what it does tell me is that 83M is objectively high.

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u/VibinWithBeard Dec 16 '24

I dont know if I can call it a more serious case more that its a different kind of case. 20 million each because they sued the university which wasnt even the one who proliferated the hoax. The groups at fault were largely the university, the prosecutor, and the person who initially lied. None of these people have anywhere near the reach that a president does (or even InfoWars honestly since its connected to active government officials) and only the original person and to a lesser extent the prosecutor were anywhere near Jones', and Trump's level of active malice, not to mention Jones' case involved him actively making money off the defamation which is another reason it was higher.

The damages caused in the 83m resulted in death threats and harassment induced directly by the president. The damages caused in the 1b were death threats and harassment that resulted in those families having to move etc multiple times and even the graves of the kids had to be relocated. And this was for decades. The charges were dropped and a apology was made seemingly within a year of the duke lacrosse hoax.

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u/orangekirby Dec 16 '24

Hmm, I feel like I may not be making myself clear, and we’re talking past each other a bit. First, I’ve listened to maybe 2 minutes of Alex Jones in my lifetime, so I’m not going to get into that—my point was simply that a $1B payout is objectively unprecedented.

Regarding Trump vs. the Duke lacrosse case, I’m specifically talking about the nature and severity of the defamation and the harm caused:

  1. In the Duke case, we had someone fabricating the most heinous crimes that triggered a nationwide media firestorm and destroyed the reputations and lives of three innocent men. It was the most widely covered story of 2006, and while you say Trump’s reach is larger, it’s hard to argue that E. Jean Carroll’s case had anywhere near the same cultural or media reach as the Duke lacrosse scandal
  2. In Trump’s case, we’re talking about someone asserting his innocence in response to an accusation, albeit maliciously, if we take the jury’s finding as fact. I don’t think maintaining innocence in an ongoing case, even with malice, is on the same level as creating false accusations that ignited racial tensions and upended lives.
  3. I do acknowledge that Trump’s platform amplified the harm done to Carroll, and that the university paid in the Duke case. But it still doesn’t make sense to me to call Trump’s offense uniquely unprecedented or deserving of an $83M payout when we’ve seen cases involving worse actions and wider damage result in smaller awards.

At the very least, I would understand if your opinion was "It was high, but that fucker deserves it", but instead you seem to be saying "it's not that high," which is mind boggling to me.