When I was a teenager trying to learn the wold immediately, I wished for a Rule Book for Society so I could just go look up my problem. Of course I never found it until I was studying for my Paralegal degree. I, like all those that studied law before me, fell in love with “The Law”.
Of course there are several areas of law, such as, Criminal, Family, Administrative (government), Contracts and Tort law, just to name a few. I was more interested in Contract and Tort law. Tort law is when a party is injured outside of a contract, as in two strangers.
What is lovable about the law is just about any possible occurrence on earth has already been decided by law. This leads us to Damages awarded to an injured party. Under Administrative law, if a merchant uses bait and switch to defraud a customer, the damages can be legislated to be treble damages; allowing the customer get back three times what he paid.
Under Contract law, a customer can get back damages to put him back financially where he was at the beginning of the contract. That is it. There is no punitive damages that a jury can use to really stick it to ‘em.
But one can get punitive damages under Tort law though, because the victim didn’t ask to be in the relationship. Therefore, a jury may decide to stick it to ‘em, if they want. The more repugnant the act was the more pissed off the jury will be.
But just how far can a Tort case go in punitive damages? Well, there is an answer for that too. They first must determine the Net Worth of the defendant. Then they can award up to one dollar less than his total Net Worth. This is just one dollar from making him insolvent. That is the maximum that can be awarded.
I have not read a single article about the Alex Jones court case but I did see the headline that the jury awarded victims $1 Billion dollars. I don’t know if he is a Billionaire or not. But if you assume he is not, then it is all theater with Jones just playing a bit part in it.