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Can someone help me with this? I don't understand how litigious American society is - how is this even a thing? Yes he's a colossal asshole for saying these things but how do people think they are just going to bankrupt him?
They are private citizens, not (a) public officials (who get basically no protection for defamation) or (b) public figures (who, if they injected themselves into the public sphere, may get lesser protection). As private citizens, they have privacy interests, emotional interests, personal economic interests, and most of all social reputational interest that are shielded from defamation.
These people, or at least most of them, did absolutely nothing to thrust themselves into the spotlight (unlike someone like, say, David Hogg who affirmatively hit the lecture circuit after being the victim of a tragedy). They were thrust into the spotlight by a guy murdering their children.
They have a clear case. Alex Jones' defense, as @Fedorable touched upon, will be that he had a "reasonable belief" that the statements were true and that there were grounds for that reasonable belief. The standard will be whether a reasonable person under reasonable circumstances would believe the statements given their subjective impression of the objective grounds presented to them.
I hope that helps. And I hope they nail this mother fucker to the wall.
I wouldn't mind seeing Alex Jones ruined, but is this lawsuit just because their feelings were hurt?
I didn't see an IIED claim in there, which wouldn't stick anyways.
The lawsuit is primarily, I would wager, that their reputations were hurt. You know, some of the people that thought they were hired actors merely acting like their kid was murdered apparently took that as somewhat of a blight on their character.
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