The US legal system seems more bonkers every day

FoxEye said:
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.
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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
 
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?
 
FoxEye said:
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?
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Why are you so sure this is motivated by anything other than the scale of the crime itself?
 
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.
 
FoxEye said:
So what crimes should result in being "stripped of most of his wealth" then? Slander? Tax evasion? Bad driving? Insulting the Queen?
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The most serious of crimes, that cause significant harm to others.

A good example would be a toxic sack of garbage constantly claiming Sandy Hook was fake so repetatively and to such an extent, that his "followers" began harassing the bereaved family members.

FoxEye said:
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?
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Nobody is saying that though, only you are.

FoxEye said:
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."
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Nobody is saying that either though, only you are.

FoxEye said:
In what world is that even slightly sane?
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In the same world where you can construct not 1, but 2 separate strawman arguments that nobody was making.
 
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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.
 
FoxEye said:
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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The chap was given every opportunity to do the proper thing. Jones literally went out of his way to bankrupt himself financially and morally. He was fully aware of his lies and liabilities.
 
FoxEye said:
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!
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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.
 
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?
 
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