Dumb Political Correctness

A poll of Golden Globes viewers says they want Ricky Gervais to host “every year.”
lol
71% said he was “amazing”
9% thought he was “good, but forgettable”
20% of haters voted that he was “awful.”

But Gervais responded with, “Never gonna happen”

 

John Nolte writes at Breitbart.com:

 

It's not even that they can't take a joke. It's worse than that. They think they are our betters and are offended when anyone not Hollywood makes fun of them. Self-righteousness has no sense of self analysis. Nor, it appears, does it have a funny bone.

 

Slightly afield here, but still something of a cautionary tale



Here was the drawing which I think is what got them all atwitter

 

When Boy George is the voice of sanity and reason, your movement has gone too far. Link.

 

Couldnt happen to a nicer bunch

 

Would the lawyers on this board like to guess how much Sandmann got?

 

The plaintiff's atty probably got b/w 33-40%. Is that what you meant?

 

How much did Sandmann put in his pocket.

 

So does that mean that all of the money Michelle Williams has made during her career is blood money?

 

Settlement terms are usually confidential. If CNN paid a big sum, it might stay that way. If they paid a small amount, they will probably leak that out no matter what the settlement says.

 

Without knowing the gross amount of the settlement, it's impossible to know or even guess with much basis. I agree with Joe that if the settlement was small or nuisance value (meaning that CNN basically paid them token money to make it go away), they'd leak the settlement amount. My guess is that it's more than that, but the difficulty in holding a defamation verdict on appeal makes it highly unlikely that they paid an obscene amount. It wouldn't surprise me if they paid in the mid six figure to low seven figure amount.

As for how much Sandmann will get in his pocket, let's suppose they settled for $1M. His attorney might take in the 33 and 1/3 or 40 percent range plus case expenses. That would be customary if he just hired a personal injury firm. Suppose expenses were $10K. That would leave Sandmann in the $590K to $657K range.

A few wrinkles in that though - one good for Sandmann, one not so good. My understanding (which could be wrong) is that his lawyers are doing this case because they believe in his cause and aren't just run of the mill personal injury lawyers. If that's the case, then it wouldn't surprise me if they charge him less. I doubt they'll waive the fee altogether, because defamation cases are pretty high-risk and very difficult to win, but it wouldn't surprise me if they cut the fee significantly. I certainly would.

The one that's not so good - compensation for person injuries (including non-economic damages) is not taxable. However, punitive damages are taxable, and the US Tax Court has held that settlements for confidentiality are taxable. (Long story, but that's actually Dennis Rodman's fault.) Accordingly, whatever portion of the settlement intended to keep Sandmann quiet and any amount intended for punitive damages will be taxable, so he could get a 1099 from CNN. Hopefully the breakdown is made clear in his settlement.

 

You Grindr folks need to be careful out there

 

Thats a good point. One cannot buy good PR like this. This atty already had a good name in this specialized field (i wrote about him above) but this case is going to blow it out for him. He will be turning cases away for the next 20 years.

 

if they went with Gervais, they could put it on pay-per-view and make a ton

 

And I hope this opens the floodgates and leads to a lot more defamation litigation against media defendants.

 

Does this make sense tho since he was sueing for $275MM? Would the same attorney who came up with that figure advise his client to take so little?

 

I see "The Death Of Fake News"

 

A million in hand NOW beats a few years of waiting for trial, hoping to prevail and THEN another three or four years of appellate activity, hoping the judgment stands.

Meanwhile, the attorney has their name out there for the next person down the line that the media tries this crap with...

 

Sandman still has several defendants to go. For example, he also sued the WAPO for $250 million.

Attys Barnes & Murphy have also filed defamation suits on behalf 8 of the other unnamed Covington students (they are suing as John Does), with named defendants Elizabeth Warren, Deb Haaland, Ana Navarro, Maggie Haberman, Matthew Dowd, Kathy Griffin, Adam Edelen, Kevin Kruse, Shaun King, Clara Jeffery, Jodi Jacobson and Reza Aslan.

By pure coincidence of timing, Reza Aslan was finally served with the complaint just today. The action was filed back in August but the service people had trouble finding him. Aslan is an "author, producer, and show host" who tweeted that Sandmann's face was "punchable." Despite repeated requests for him to take the tweet down, he just left it up. However, he finally took the tweet down today not coincidentally after he (literally) got served.

The damages in these actions against the individual defendants sought are "in an amount not less than $15,000 but not more than $50,000 against each," which comes to between $135,000 and $450,000 per plaintiff.

 

Yes. When you hear that somebody is suing for a certain amount of money, that is virtually never what they're expecting to get. They will quote a very high and sometimes astronomical figure. The reason why is that it often starts as a negotiation point. You can always negotiate down, but absent some newly discovered fact, you can't negotiate up. Furthermore, some courts require you to state a maximum amount of damages, so if you state a figure too small, you could limit what a jury can award you.

A notable exception involves certain cases that involve liability insurance. Texas law imposes a common law duty on insurers to their insured to accept a reasonable demand to settle within the policy limit when liability is reasonably clear. In situations in which damages are likely to exceed the policy limit and the insured party is judgment proof, I demand the policy limit. If the carrier rejects it and I get more from the jury, the carrier will ultimately have to pay the excess. However, that wouldn't be true if I just demanded some astronomical figure.

 

If anyone still cares, the Jessie Smollett matter is still moving forward. A judge recently ordered Google to turn over a year of his emails emails, location data, search history, photographs, private messages and other information to the special prosecutor. They are looking into why charges were dropped.
Jussie Smollett investigation: Judge orders Google to turn over a full year of the actor’s data as part of special prosecutor probe

 

It seems the damages in this case won't be terribly significant ... but PUNITIVELY

275 mill is probably sufficient for ONE of the students. It should be multiplied by the number of students ... AND staff.

You're not being punished for a typo or even a single error in fact ... you're being punished for spreading lies in a programmed narrative. The sum of those judgements should just about close CNN's doors.

 

No shiite. I know how negotiations work. However, accepting 0.3% of what you are asking not good negotiating. I remain skeptical that CNN got away with paying that little.

 

That's fine. I was simply answering your question and coming up with a hypothetical figure that was mathematically easy to work with. None of us have any idea what the settlement actually was.

Nevertheless, if they settled for $1M, I think you're judging them too harshly. Why ask for $275M? Because it would take something like that to harshly punish CNN. They deserve to pay $275M. Why be willing to settle for $1M? Because if you're a 17-year-old kid, $1M is life-changing money even if the firm charges its full fee. It means not having to pay for college. It means not having to pay for a car. It means not having to pay for a house. It means having a nice nest egg to use to start your retirement savings. He may not want to gamble it on the whims of 12 jurors he doesn't know and on appellate court judges who have been tossing out defamation lawsuits (and somewhat erratically and unpredictably) since the mid-'60s.

If I was Sandmann's lawyer and CNN was putting $1M on the table, I might prefer to fight it out in court and shoot for a bigger recovery and therefore a bigger fee and might tell him I thought he should do so. I had plenty of clients who were more risk-averse than I was and who had to be advised to go to court. However, if I'm doing my job, I have to advise Sandmann of the big risks in turning it down. That's my duty. Furthermore, I'd be sick if I took his case to court and pissed away $1M because a Trump-hater happened to get on the jury or won a big verdict only to have some appellate court judge toss it out, because the federal courts have been crapping on defamation lawsuits for a long time.

 

Reading that Mr D there is no way I could be a personal injury lawyer.
When I think of PIs i think of slimy unethical (present company excluded) greedy scumbags taking flimsy or fake cases to bilk big companies into paying off to make the cases go away.
Then a case like this comes along and you see a completely different view and how
complex it gets even when the person deserves to get a big judgement but might not due to a jury ruling against him. The thought of him getting nothing from CNN is sick.

 

Well spoken Deez and I get all that and appreciate you taking the time to explain how it all works on that side. I guess I don't think CNN would offer that little to settle in the first place. If they really want this to go away, they risk pissing off the plaintiff to where he won't settle with them for any amount. They also have to think about what they are risking - not just a judgement, but a lot of stuff coming out in discovery that they'd rather the public did not know about.

Furthermore, they are up against someone who strikes me as suing them and others as much for principle as the money. If he asks $275MM and settles for $1MM (and that low amount would for sure be leaked IMO) then he looks unserious about how he was harmed. IDT he wants that either.