59
votes
Elon Musk sued for defamation of recent college graduate by attorney who won $49 million from Alex Jones over Sandy Hook lies
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- Title
- Elon Musk sued by lawyer who won millions for Sandy Hook parents from Alex Jones
- Published
- Oct 2 2023
- Word count
- 794 words
It must be so freeing to be worth $260 billion (05oct2023) [0]. So even if the plaintiff was awarded a ridiculous amount like $100 million, that would be 0.000384615 of Musk's total Net Worth ($100 million/$260 billion).
That's like being sued for $19.23 out of a yearly gross of $50,000. It'll be so much less than $19.23 (ie; $100 million). Even the lawyer fees will be so much less than $19.23. It completely changes a person's thinking about how they react to these kinds of things.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/
It's amazing how some of these extremely wealthy people reveal their character as people to the general public. Elon invited the nazis and white supremacists back to twitter/x. On the other hand, some wealthy people try to do good with their wealth. It's an unjust system generally, but some handle it with grace and a bit of compassion/social awareness, and some do the opposite.
While he is disgustingly wealthy, you don't need to exaggerate with bad comparisons. Net worth is a notoriously useless metric given it's almost always taking stocks into account as if somehow liquidating all of them tomorrow wouldn't instantly nuke their value (IF that was even possible).
100 million still wouldn't phase him much, but it's not like he could just finance the twitter deal in raw cash. There's a reason loans and collateral were required and it's not just some tax evasion thing.
Yes, agreed. I think we all know how net worth works. I was just trying to make the point that his thought processes and emotional state would be different from many of us. It was more of a side note response. I sometimes tend to look at the psychology of things.
If I was being sued tomorrow for $5,000, I'd be in panic. The thought of trying to find someone to defend me, would add a ton of additional stress (and expense). However, if the lawsuit was for $5 and finding someone to defend me cost about $1... I think I would have a lot of fun with the entire process. I certainly wouldn't take any of it seriously.
That is the psychology I was trying (and failing) to communicate in my original comment, it seems.
For these multi-billionaires, several million (probably, I wouldn't know) doesn't make them react the same way. It must be freeing to make decisions, to appear "bold" when they really aren't sacrificing much.
Yes. There is a very large population of people who are not poor enough to receive legal aid, but who cannot afford to hire a lawyer.
California offers publicly funded county law libraries, and there are publishers like Nolo who aim to make law more accessible, but the legal system is a very difficult environment to navigate without a licensed skilled advocate.
Hopefully though, the judge will be able to clear things up in terms of the plaintiff's reputation, and the harassment will stop.
Mark Bankston is the lawyer who had a “Perry Mason” moment during the Sandy Hook defamation case in Texas when opposing counsel accidentally handed him ALL of Jones’ phone records. I’ve been following his career after I was introduced to him on a podcast about analyzing and debunking Alex Jones called Knowledge Fight. The podcasters did deep dive analysis on the depositions from Jones’ Texas and Connecticut cases, and interviewed Bankston and his co-counsel for the case.
Bankston seems uniquely primed to take on this kind of defamation case. I’ll be watching this one closely. It could have a huge impact on modern day defamation, slander, and hopefully root out some of the worst part of online extremist spaces.