The US legal system seems more bonkers every day

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FoxEye

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1. IANAL :p

America is a lovely country, geographically. In almost all other aspects it confuses and/or scares the living crud out of me.

This week, here in the UK, (former) Prince Harry was awarded ~£100k in damages from a news outfit, for a sustained campaign of phone hacking that may have spanned many years.

Also this week, in the USA, a private individual (Rudy Gulliani) was ordered to pay $148 million to two state election officials. The payment is to include:

$75 million in punitive damages;
$20 million each for emotional distress; LOLWUT
$16 million for Freeman and $17 million for Moss for damage to their reputations

Gulliani himself is supposed to be worth about $50 million.

Not only can he not pay anywhere near this amount, but the two election officials, should they receive this money, will go from being absolute nobodies to multi-millionaires overnight.

We all know that in the glorious land of the free many judges are appointed by political parties (what could ever go wrong with that?) But surely this just makes them look like a land of utter nutcases to anyone looking in from outside.

Some commentators say the whole trial and award is to "send him a message" and the verdict will almost certainly be overturned on appeal. If true, that in itself is bonkers.

Of course, you will find no shortage of Americans calling their legal system broken, but I wonder if anyone would care to explain and/or defend it? Or make the attempt, at least!
 
Hotwired said:
I'm vaguely thinking that these numbers are literally pulled from someones ass.

www.virginiabusinesslitigationlawyer.com

Grossly Excessive Jury Awards Can Be Set Aside or Reduced — The Virginia Business Litigation Blog — August 10, 2022

Juries are usually told they can award to a successful plaintiff whatever amount they decide is appropriate, however high that number might be. The judge, — August 10, 2022
www.virginiabusinesslitigationlawyer.com www.virginiabusinesslitigationlawyer.com

That appears to me that juries are told they can pick whatever number out of thin air and then after that an actual judge decides if the numbers have any merit!

Just cue this for every announcement of jury decided damages.

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Surely the whole idea of juries deciding damages (amounts thereof) is a nonsense that shouldn't happen... Surely that should be the domain of actual legal professionals/judges in the first place? For the sake of consistency and fairness?
 
Devilman said:
Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy....
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That's irrelevent. If you are happy for the law to screw your enemies, you'd better be happy for your enemies to use the same law to screw you.

Better for everyone that the law not be 100% batfink crazy.
 
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Devilman said:
MY enemies? No... stop being so overly dramatic.

He is a scumbag who has made countless millions from being a scumbag. he deserves everything he gets.

I am always happy for the law to screw over scumbags who have made millions from being scumbags.
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The legal system shouldn't be driven by emotion, or revenge. That's not what it's supposed to be about.

People who think the law is a tool for getting revenge are dangerous indeed.
 
D.P. said:
Why do you think punishment for serious crime is revenge?


As to the payout, in the US you can sue for punitive damages that can consider personal wealth. This is in general a good thing, so someone on the poverty line will get a much small fine than a millionaire. But then things get blurry because the claims are made with the knowledge they will always be negotiated downwards so you start at a high level. But if the defendent does publicaly reveal their welath then the jury wont know how much can be punished, If Giuliani is really worth about 50mil, then the goal would be dmaages of say 45-47mil to strip him of nost of his wealth so he is actaully punished, rather than a 100K fine which is probably 1 weeks interest payments
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So what crimes should result in being "stripped of most of his wealth" then? Slander? Tax evasion? Bad driving? Insulting the Queen?

I mean, really, when does a "customised" punishment like that appropriate? If you don't like him? If the current president doesn't like him? If the current state governor doesn't like him?

At what point do we say, "This guy committed a crime (any crime really it doesn't matter) and he's currently not on anyone's Christmas list, so it's appropriate to strip him of everything he owns."

In what world is that even slightly sane?
 
CapitalOne said:
Why are you so sure this is motivated by anything other than the scale of the crime itself?
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It's fairly obvious when the same crimes committed by different people result in utterly different damages. In Giuliani's case "defamation causing emotional distress".

Has nobody ever committed defamation against two public sector workers, or do you think every random defamation case results in a $148 million settlement? Lols.

And this is another point. This system encourages people like those two public sector workers to bring cases, but only against those with a lot of money where it would be worthwhile. They could each get $40 million plus (well, if he even had that kind of money).

For defamation and emotional distress. Meanwhile, Harry gets £100k from The Mirror, which is arguably a lot more appropriate.
 
Except none of you actually justified the increasing of damages except by saying the crimes were "the most serious". And again, defamation happens fairly often and you don't get 7 figure damages automatically awarded between two randoms, so it's clearly nothing to do with the severity of the crime. It's 100% correlated to the estimated wealth of the person committing the crime.
 
Colonel_Klinck said:
Do you think Rudy and others singling these two women out, saying they were cheating, rigging the election as they volunteered as vote counters, saying they were drug dealers or at least were passing drugs around could cause emotional distress? They've had death threats, they still get death threats. He and others ruined their lives with lies.

No one wants to employ them, why would you want the hassle of a person who could be a target working in your businesses.

Punitive damages are punishment. He defamed them again outside the court just a few days ago. I hope they sue him again.

If he wants to appeal he has to put up a bond. Obviously he doesn't have the full $148m but they'll likely ask for between $5-10m and if he loses that appeal the money goes straight to the plaintiffs. Let's wait and see if he does actually appeal. Trump said he was going to appeal the Eugene Carroll case, he hasn't for the exactly the same reason.
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How does that warrant $40+ million each? $20 million each for emotional distress, alone..?

Medics and soldiers and cops and firefighters and a host of other people suffer emotional distress on the job. They don't get $20 million payouts.

Many people get trounced on social media and defamed and "cancelled" and all sorts of crap.

How often do people who have similar emotional distress get a $20 million payout from their employer, or from anyone?

Do you not think these two are being unduly compensated in any way, shape or form? Really?
 
CapitalOne said:
If you have to ask that, well there is no helping you :D how on earth are ypu going to understand the justice system?
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Yeah, that amazing superpower whose citizens struggle to afford dentistry and basic medicines. Where people die because they try to ration insulin because they can't afford it. Where going to the hospital can bankrupt you for life.

Great stuff. An example to the rest of us.
 
CapitalOne said:
Ok, so are you are saying all those things relate to the civil law process or are you
just saying the US is a bit nuts? If the latter, why the hell would you invoke cases involving total frothers as evidence, rather than more rational people?
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The latter. How the hell do two public sector workers win $40 million in damages for defamation? It's so utterly beyond ridiculous. That can't be due to loss of earnings, they wouldn't have earned anywhere near that as a public sector worker.

The $20 million emotional distress payment alone... it's beyond imagining.

I don't care that the defendants are "frothers". They could be Hitler for all I care. I just don't understand how the damages scale with the defendant's personal wealth. Or rather, why it should scale.
 
jigger said:
Wealthy Americans should tread carefully when it comes to potentially slanderous liable actions.
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That's not justice tho is it. On the flipside, if you have no money, you can slander whoever you like because nobody is going to bother taking you to court over it if you've got no money?
 
CapitalOne said:
Well it’s because they are frothers they got themselves into this situation in the first place :D

As for scale are you kidding? I’ll take that comment at face value and just say if you don’t understand why financial penalties should be exactly as described in their name so that there is not an ability for the wealthy to afford breaches I’ve got some news for you - speeding fines in the UK can be linked to how much you earn!
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Speeding fines are capped at £1000/£2500. Hardly equivalent to a $20 million payment for emotional distress!
 
Penfold101 said:
You haven’t actually read up on the case have you? If you had, you’d know what he put these women through for simply doing their job as civil servants, not admitting his wrongdoing or showing any remorse at any point in the case. He has utterly destroyed their lives for, no reason whatsoever.

Guiliani is still holding out in the vain hope Trump will come and rescue him, which is hilarious.
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But if someone else had done it - someone else with less money - the damages would be less. Yes/no?
Conversely, if someone with even more money than Giuliani had defamed them in the same way, even more money in damages? Let's say... Elon Musk?
Where is the point where it gets ridiculous? $100 million for emotional distress?
 
Penfold101 said:
The key word is Punitive. Part of it is to punish the one found liable and act as a preventative warning to others. You keep clinging to the ‘emotional distress’ phrase like you haven’t read the details of this particular case, in which Guiliani deserves to be bankrupt.
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I don't see how you could call that just. "Making an example" of someone isn't what I'd call justice. Glad we don't really have that concept over here.
 
Penfold101 said:
“Please don’t break the law or you might end up like this guy.”

Don’t see a problem with that myself - it’s not a larger jail sentence or anything.

Don’t break the law and it won’t be an issue - it’s not difficult.
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But we should all be strictly equal under the law. If some of us have more to lose than others, we're not equal under the law.

How do you reconcile punishments that scale with wealth and equality under the law? I can't.
 
StriderX said:
So fining poor people for speeding which could be 5-10% of their earnings whereas it's fractions of a percent for anyone earning 6 or 7 figures is equitable then is it?

There's a reason European countries are going for revenue-based fines and it's because flat fines are just business expenses.
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Yes, actually. Fines alone shouldn't be (and aren't) the whole story.

A disqualified driver is a disqualified driver regardless of their income. As far as I know, you can't pay to have points removed, so your wealth doesn't help you there.

And I do believe we shouldn't treat the legal system like we treat income tax. Imho, laws should be absolutely equal for all of us. Same crime, same punishment.
 
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