OA639: Alex Jones Owes a Literal Billion Dollars

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:18 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 639. I'm Thomas, that's Andrew, and that over there is Consequences for Horrendous People. That's also joined the chat. How's it going, Andrew?

0:01:28 Andrew: It is going fantastically well, Thomas. I was already in a good mood, and then lot of bad things happen to bad people, that and is always cause to celebrate. Break is

0:01:42 Thomas: Ah, wow. A billion dollars almost worth of bad things happen to bad people. If I were to put a number to it. But well,

0:01:49 Andrew: And And I will tell you, um, poor Miss Ashley has just been, uh, overwhelmed with you to catch me up on all of the like comments and misperceptions and everybody's an internet lawyer now that, you know, Alex Jones has a $965 million judgment against him. And You

0:02:07 Thomas: Andrew, can you blame people for thinking they could be a lawyer with some of the lawyering you've seen out of Trump lawyers, Alex Jones lawyers that, you know, it's like, I don't blame people. Wow, that doesn't look hard.

0:02:20 Andrew: In Fair point. So I want to explain what that is, why you should be celebrating it. We why told you, right when the press was saying $50 million damage verdict against Alex Jones coming out of the Texas case, we told you, no, it isn't, right? It's going to be much, much smaller than that. Tried we to give some of the potential counter-counter arguments, but we threw a big old of cold water skepticism on those numbers coming out of Texas. I want to tell you, you do not need to have that level of skepticism about this number, uh, coming out of Connecticut. So

0:02:53 Thomas: I mean, obviously going to be my first question was that

0:02:56 Andrew: Yep. Let's do that, we're but going to talk only very briefly about Donald Trump in this episode, which is another great thing, um, as we are recording this, uh, we're going to have another, uh, January 6th committee hearing, the first, uh, after the, uh, summer break. And, you we're going to digest it. You know, we're gonna come back and, and talk about it. Can't, can't cover it today. Again, can can't covered Tuesday because of, my travel schedule, but,

0:03:01 Thomas: Too much good stuff is the issue.

0:03:21 Andrew: Yeah, so we'll, we'll figure it out. If If, it has breaking bombshells, you, know, we take good care of you so we we will be there also not talking about it because I have not been talking about the merits of Donald Trump's idiotic petition before Clarence Thomas. Well, the DOJ's brief was due on Tuesday. I read it. This reminded me that recently Joe Biden named Elizabeth Prolagar Solicitor General of the United States, the Solicitor General, among other things. Her job is to represent the United States in proceedings before the Supreme Court. And her brief it's is, just masterful. It's fantastic.

0:03:55 Thomas: Oh, she's great.

0:03:57 Andrew: Yeah. The bad arguments that are before Clarence Thomas are dismantled as the bad agreements that they are. And I continue to be optimistic about that. Again, you know if the world turns terrible, come you back and own up to it. But, enjoy the sunrise while it's out there, man.

0:04:10 Thomas: Yeah, by the way, she is. She's We've talked about her for some oral arguments, I think, before that we went over. And I'm shouldn't. I'm Pretty Sure Andrew, as counterintuitive as it is, I Think She Pronounces It Prelogger, which is interesting. So I think that's how you say her name is Preloger.

0:04:23 Andrew: You can tell I'm a documents guy. So I appreciate that. So

0:04:26 Thomas: Yeah, no, no. Just saving us emails. Although we've said now it both ways. So either way, don't email. Maybe I'm wrong.

0:04:35 Thomas: One of us is right. Right, well, it's fine, leave it there, yeah.

0:04:37 Andrew: This is a thesaurus all over again.

0:04:40 Thomas: Uh, all right. Well, I'm excited to get to it. I want to hear more about, uh, roughly one, somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 billion worth of karma that just was delivered to the United States. So let's get to our first segment.

0:04:51 Andrew: So

0:04:55 Clip: Andrew Torres is correct, the best kind of correct, Andrew Torres, you were right, tell your sister, you are right.

0:05:11 Thomas: And Andrew, some late breaking news, fortunately right now we can touch on it quickly, good news, and Andrew was right, big Andrew was right. What happened?

0:05:23 Andrew: Yeah, as we're recording today, Thursday, October the 13th, two days after the DOJ and Elizabeth Perlogar followed filed the brief that I just discussed without giving Donald Trump's idiot lawyers even an opportunity to vote. File a reply brief. This is just docketed. Clarence Thomas, I'm going to read it word for word. The application to vacate the stay entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on September 21st, 2022, presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the court is denied. So two important things here that I think we were right on both that I just want to to make absolutely clear to everybody. First, I said, Clarence Thomas has the power to take this on directly and to grant a stay. But I said I didn't think that was going to happen. And in fact, that did not happen.

0:06:19 Andrew: He referred it on to the entire court. We have no idea how the court voted. What we know is that on these so-called shadow docket cases, right, because that's what this is, right? This is just order in a pending case. This is an order for miscellaneous relief. You can file a dissent. Clarence Thomas and others have filed dissents in dockets in these kinds of cases, and no dissents were filed. This is a 9-0 denial, exactly as we predicted. Yes, Clarence Thomas could have stuck his neck out, but he knew that this was going to happen. If right? He did, then you would just immediately have the Supreme Court grant cert and slap him him down, and you know, I don't know, maybe he's got to sleep on the couch tonight, but um, thanks.

0:06:19 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, that's a good one.

0:07:05 Andrew: So

0:07:06 Thomas: Yeah, I mean this is, I think this is just just all credit to you. And it's why I think OA is so useful because so many people think it's kind of an easy, smart sounding thing to just say, ah, system's broken, everybody's corrupt, whatever. But it's like, it's broken in specific ways and not broken in a way. In And that's changing every day, by the way. This is not, this is not me saying I'm like fine with it, but I love that OA allows us to know, you really the details of what's going on. Like you're, you're making predictions at a detailed level. Uh, and of course being held accountable either way, if it's right or if it'S wrong, but in a way that like, I think your average liberal might've thought this was a big problem that Clarence Thomas could go through this. And, uh, I was worried, but, you uh were right on on this.

0:07:50 Andrew: It And look, I do not want to suggest that we should not be worried about the Supreme Court. I right have given you know a 30 minute talk uh on that that you know basically says we are headed for a new Lochner era if we don't do something, right?

0:08:08 Thomas: Well nailed that prediction. Uh well done, Andrew.

0:08:11 Andrew: That just and adds one more happy moment to a happy day.

0:08:15 Clip: I don't like them putting chemicals in the water, that turn the friggin' frogs gay, Hey.

0:08:19 Thomas: Okay, Andrew, $965 million. So I guess I, I'll spot, I'm you that extra 35. Well, it isn't quite a billion. What's going on? Is it the kind of thing where we got to be really worried about this being appealed away or a judge saying, Hey, I'm a Republican a-hole who thinks that, you people take advantage of poor, unfortunate corporations in general. So I'm going to reduce these punitive damages because that's what Republicans like to do. What do you think?

0:08:46 Andrew: Absolutely not. I want all the chips in on this. This is not going to get reduced on appeal. There is nothing to worry about in terms of the merits of the award. Let And me unpack, and of talk about what's going to happen going forward. So if you want to make the top level argument that holding wealthy people accountable for the stuff they do is difficult and increasingly difficult as our society stratifies, like, yeah, I'm with you, right? Like late states capitalism, we're there with you. Okay, so yes, Alex Jones will use and has already tried to set up every possible connivance he can, uh, to avoid paying a dime to plaintiffs, that to whom he owes money.

0:08:47 Thomas: Oh, wow. Ooh, sure. Oh, yeah. I think if you just say, I declare bankruptcy, then it just, you don't have to pay anyone anything, right? He

0:09:36 Andrew: Yeah, seems to think that. And I want to tell you, already those measures are starting to fail. They will continue to fail now. Is You he going to wind up like, you the Mortimer and Randolph Duke from trading places, you know? Huddled around a fire barrel? Like, no, right? Rich people will do everything they can to evade the system. But the days of Alex Jones just taking private flights off to Connecticut to throw a temper tantrum on the courthouse, those days are over, we're right? Going to break it down.

0:10:06 Thomas: He's going to be Ubering to his tantrums now? Dang.

0:10:08 Andrew: Yeah, he's going to be Ubering to his tantrums. He's goingto be balancing budgets. He's gonna owe people money. He's gonnahave to think about how bills get paid like the rest of us. And an unambiguous victory right and

0:10:21 Thomas: He's like, God, God, I got a cell like 45 thousand buckets of slop this month. If I get the, I had get the budget, right. That's so much slop. Where am I keeping all this?

0:10:30 Andrew: Going to talk about that. So, The Texas number is being reported as nearly $50 million. We told you that was going to get reduced a lot on appeal because only $4.1 million of that was in compensatory damages. The other $45-plus million was in punitives, and Texas has a tight cap on those. This damage award is 100% compensatory. No punitive damages have yet been assessed.

0:10:56 Thomas: What are those going to be? Eleventy trillion billion zillions.

0:11:01 Andrew: May be the entirety of wealth of the Western Hemisphere. It could be, right? And as Ace Associate Morgan Stringer pointed out on her deep dive a couple of episodes ago, this case has a cause of action under the Connecticut Uniform Trade Practices Act that evades the cap on punitive damages in Connecticut. So even more money is coming.

0:11:01 Thomas: Oh yeah. Wow.

0:11:25 Andrew: How did we get to the $965 million verdict? Answer The is there are more plaintiffs in this this case. And these damages are broken down by present and future, both defamation and slander and also emotional distress, right? Intentional infliction of emotional distress. So for example, Robbie Parker testified memorably and emotionally, I mean, probably the most attacked parent by Alex Jones over Yeah, you saw him kind of give that nervous chuckle. So that means he's a crisis actor. That was Robbie Parker, right?

0:11:49 Thomas: Really?

0:11:57 Andrew: Went out

0:11:57 Thomas: I yeah, I, this is something that's too emotionally difficult. So don'T I follow it. Pretend. Pretend I don't know any of this.

0:12:01 Andrew: Good, I will.

0:12:04 Thomas: A big shout out to Morgan for bearing the brunt of this labor. So thanks, Morgan. You're the best. Her coverage has been great.

0:12:06 Andrew: Gosh. Yeah. Yeah, it really has been. She is at most string, M-O-S-T-R-I-N-G on Twitter. So Robbie Parker was awarded $120 million. That breaks down as follows. $60 million for past and future defamation and slander, and $60 million for emotional distress. If you're thinking, those seem like really high numbers, those are really high number, right? By comparison, for example, William Sherlock was awarded $36 million. Now, Sherlock is not a parent. He's the husband of Mary Sherlock. That was the Sandy Hook school psychologist who was killed in the hallway. And Sherlock says, because you my wife was the school psychologist, I got swept up in all this conspiracy mongering and, you know, people are harassing me and saying my wife wasn't dead.

0:12:56 Andrew: And conspiracy theorist also then brought me in on, you they left a note on my car windshield saying, "We know Robbie Parker was an actor, confess," you know. So, you level of harassment, the jury said, we think this is not quite the same level of severity. So defamation, slander, past and future, $9 million. And emotional distress, past plus future, add up to $27 million. One of the the things, and I could go through, but basically you go through all the plaintiffs one by one, you add them up, the past, the present, uh, the defamation and the emotional distress, and you get $965 million. Dollars Now, the fact that the jury very carefully delineated between the victims they thought bore the brunt of Alex Jones's wrath uh, versus those who were more collateral damage, damage is going to testify as to the reasonableness of their actions if this is appealed. And I say if this has appealed, yeah,

0:13:54 Thomas: You we've said this before. It's obviously icky in a certain way to try to put dollar values on pain and all that. But the alternative is this asshole just gets to do this and get like, you unfortunately, that is what you have to do. And it sounds like they did a reasonable job of trying to assess that in a way that's, rational and does their best.

0:14:04 Andrew: The not, right? Yeah, that is exactly right. So if you were to appeal, and despite the fact that Norm Pattis, who, by the way, if there's a lawyer who's had a worst day in the history of law. I Norm Pattis cost his client a billion dollars yesterday.

0:14:24 Thomas: Good point.

0:14:28 Andrew: That's going to be what I go to when I lose a case or lose a motion or whatever that helps me go to sleep at night. Well, at least I'm not Norm Pattis. That may be the worst day any lawyer has ever had.

0:14:38 Thomas: Yeah. God, I want to quantify that now. Does anybody, let's, that's an interesting long-term project. Let's see if there's a word in history. Don't the Titanic's lawyer? I don't know, something.

0:14:45 Andrew: Yeah, Yeah. I this one for your consideration. So Norm Pattis has insisted he's going to appeal the verdict. That's fine, right? And let me explain why that's fine. Because because he's terrible at his job. Because the trier of fact that that's what the jury is, right, is entitled to use their discretion to determine how much someone is compensated by an adjudicated verdict that a person is liable, that's right? Why we have juries, We said, right. As a matter of law, right., you are instructed, due to the numerous defaults, that Alex Jones has libeled the plaintiffs, so your job is to figure out how how much they're owed. And

0:14:56 Thomas: Yeah. Because It's Norm Pattison, we're not terribly worried about him winning anything.

0:15:33 Thomas: Yeah.

0:15:33 Andrew: That verdict result is reviewable only for abusive discretion, Did right? They do something so egregiously wrong, or did they do the job that we expect a jury to do? The And differential numbers among the various plaintiffs all sort of point to, yeah, no, I don't know what you're going to attack on right, yeah, yeah.

0:15:53 Thomas: Yeah, they didn't just write, Like nine, nine, nine, five, nine, you know, maximum amount for Everybody, like No, like in Zealot when you get to many rupees and it's just nine, nine, ninety nine like they didn' do that. Oh.

0:16:04 Andrew: Or like in the old school video games you'd where blow through the stack and it would restart at one. That

0:16:10 Thomas: Wow, that's that's harsh, not that old, that never happened to me, of

0:16:13 Andrew: Yeah. You should visit some classic arcades. They're fun. Anyway, the merits, nothing is going to disturb this award on appeal of the merits. And what a lot of people don't realize is just filing an appeal does not stay the judgment, okay? So it's not like Alex Jones can go, I'm not going to pay this till my appeal goes down. You don't get to say that. You can move the court to stay the enforcement of a judgment-pending appeal. And a court will consider that. And a court would in fact consider that in this case, provided that you post a bond.

0:16:15 Thomas: A Billion dollars.

0:16:47 Andrew: Don't have any experience with billion-dollar verdicts, but typically, you the bond that you are required to purchase in a context, right, in the kind of litigation that I do, you've got to put up at least 10 percent of the the amount, right?

0:16:50 Thomas: Yeah. I was going to say any percent you say is going to be pretty significant.

0:17:05 Andrew: Yeah, no, that's right. I would anticipate that it's probably going to be more the larger it is, because, right, you were sort of insuring against the risk of default. So I don't think Alex Jones could come up with $100 million in cash. I certainly don't think he could get it approved as a bankruptcy expense to come out of, you, free speech systems, Infowars. So, yeah, I don't think he's getting the money to come up with a bond. That means you are not staying the effect of this judgment pending appeal. It will run. So how does it run? You And go after all of the parties, jointly and severally, that are adjudicated liable by the jury's verdict. Alex Jones personally is not yet in bankruptcy. Bankruptcy, he may declare a personal bankruptcy. I know we have listeners who have gone through personal bankruptcies, and they will attest that used to be, you know, a more favorable procedure, but it isn't anymore, right? It's real bad to go through a personal bankruptcy 15 years ago.

0:17:11 Thomas: Oh yeah.

0:17:59 Thomas: When did that change? Oh wow. They made it harder after like the 2008 financial crisis.

0:18:04 Andrew: Yeah, I know, right. Going through a personal bankruptcy is not a panacea. And let's describe how the InfoWars free speech system stuff plays out. Because those parties are in a Chapter 11 restructuring right now, the bulk of Alex Jones's income goes to those parties, So right? When he does Info Wars, right, and you buy the, you know, bucket of crap, your credit card goes to free speech systems, which then pays InfoWars, which then plays Alex Jones. Roughly speaking, I'm oversimplifying, Because right? Of the bankruptcy, all money coming in to free-speech systems or Info Wars is subject of the debtor's estate, is right, the property of the bankruptcy, and you have to move the court to get it released. That's how we know Norm Pattis, and God help us, if I could get this job, was paid $100,000 a month to

0:18:06 Thomas: Jeez. Yeah, if Norm Pettis comes out and just, just like that was all a goof to get this paycheck and I lost Alex Jones a billion dollars, he's now the hero of the world.

0:19:13 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. He will have a better run than Michael Avenatti, if that's the case. He will be touted as a future Democratic presidential candidate if he decides to do that. So, Norm, if you're listening and let's be honest, buddy, we know you are. We know you follow Morgan on Twitter. Think about coming out and saying, I never believed any of this. I was always an infiltrating into Alex Jones to, yeah, well, he's got that $100,000 still. So what happens in bankruptcy is all disgorgements out of the bankrupt estate must be approved by the bankruptcy court, right?

0:19:18 Thomas: I don't know what he has to lose at this point. Tried one Alex Jones's slop buckets, I had a big disgorgement after that.

0:19:52 Andrew: Yeah, I bet. But, you know, so they could do things like, know, for example, this was a contested motion when free speech systems wanted to disgorge two InfoWars, or it could be vice versa, several million dollars to buy more slop buckets, And right? They were like, look, we can't buy more buckets the court saying that we can. We can't operate the business. And the court, know, you after admonishing them on some of the, you know, insider deals that, know, that sort of look like they're pending, authorize that purchase. And that's an important, not just an aside here, This right? Makes the bankruptcy proceeding critically important, right. The plaintiffs here and the Texas plaintiffs are now the largest creditors, right, of free free speech systems, and InfoWars in the bankruptcy.

0:20:41 Andrew: They have already been very, very active in spotting the kind of obvious fraudulent tactics that Alex Jones has tried to use to shield his money. So one of them was creating an LLC called PQPR LLC, in which Alex Jones and his parents are the sole owners, and they claim that free speech system owes them $50 million in back inventory. And it's a transparent attempt to try and siphon that $50 million out of the estate. The plaintiff's lawyers have every incentive, and by every incentive I mean 40 cents on the dollar as their likely contingent fee, to track down every dollar as possible, right? I don't again, I'm a big fan of contingency lawyers. I think they serve an important role in the system. These people were working their asses off before they got scheduled to get paid for this. I think afterwards they have all of the public interest incentives, plus all of their personal incentives.

0:21:12 Thomas: Yeah, wow. Yeah.

0:21:44 Thomas: How did the forensic accountants unweave that, uh, brilliant, brilliant scheme of creating one LLC.

0:21:52 Andrew: That's right. Actually, and we're going to have Morgan come back on, I think, very, very soon. I know she has been really diving into the documents. There was kind of an incredible motion for reconsideration that was filed that contained some privileged documents between Alex and his lawyers in which Alex threatened, threatened not to consent to joint representation of the case in Connecticut unless they met certain terms. It's potentially wild. But the top line to think of is every dollar that goes to the Alex Jones commercial enterprise right now is being scrutinized by a bankruptcy court. Work. And yeah, you'll

0:22:26 Thomas: Yeah. I almost want to buy some stuff from him just because it's going to go to the plaintiffs, really. Hi,

0:22:31 Andrew: Be a creditor, that's right. Now you have to think about how does that get to Alex? You're not going to be able to get disbursements out of the bankrupt estate to Alex Jones. Maybe he goes on and up a Patreon page? If he sets it's a Patreon page. You can take the judgment because Alex Jones is not in bankruptcy. You can attach his bank accounts, his assets. This is ordinary collections work. It is what, not me, but what collections lawyers do all the time. And you just take a little note to the bank and And you're like, hi, I'm a creditor, and your deadbeat customer owes me $965

0:23:08 Thomas: I'm Troy McCreditor. Is what it sounds like. Yeah,

0:23:13 Andrew: Million. And that's what an attachment is, right? And then the money in the account plus money that comes into that account, the bank is like, oh, the court has directed me to pay that to Troy McClure and not to you. And again, are there limits? Yeah, there are limits, right. Had a I client who had an account attached, and we fought to get his Social Security payments, which are exempted by law, not attached and siphoned away But all the rest of his stuff, wound up satisfying the judgment. This is what happens to people who lose lawsuits even when they try to move money around. So that's going to be the bottom line here. And I guess, you kind of the last answer that I would give to a question you haven't quite asked is, you know, why were the compensables so much higher in this case as opposed to in the Texas case?

0:24:00 Thomas: Well, I thought that was because the different statute thingy that in this case or I can't remember. I'm not the lawyer.

0:24:07 Andrew: Oh, no, no. Again, these compensables are for the same causes of action right now, right? Defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress.

0:24:12 Thomas: Oh, OK. Well, what was that different thing that you did. That's like kind of the one weird trick that was going to,

0:24:20 Andrew: The one weird trick in Connecticut is that there are damages forthcoming on the Connecticut Uniform Trade Practices Act

0:24:27 Thomas: Right. That is what it was. Okay. So, we have not even gotten to that. That is the thing we have gotten to.

0:24:29 Andrew: Are that not subject to punitives. So we have that plus punitives attorney's fees. Ordinarily, as we previewed, the Connecticut punitives are tied to your attorney's fees, which makes it potentially even more onerous than Texas, unless you get a huge compensatory verdict. How did they wind up with a huge compensator verdict here? Again, the answer, Norm Pattis. Yes.

0:24:32 Thomas: Oh, okay. Wow.

0:24:53 Thomas: Oh! Is he the plaintiff's attorney? Is he one of the all-star?

0:24:55 Andrew: I don't think the plaintiffs here did a materially better job than the plaintiff's attorneys did in Texas, right? Again, I wasn't there. I'm sure both sets of, I want to be very, very clear about this. Both sets of plaintiff lawyers did a better job than I would have done in these cases, right. I don'T handle these kinds of cases. He says, so when I'm fly specking or Morgan is fly speckling or whatever, that is, you it's easy to Monday morning quarterback. And that's kind of what we're doing. The plaintiffs didn't do that, such an amazingly better job. What happened was, in this case, Alex Jones got the defense that he wanted instead of an outside lawyer.

That was, you know, Raynal, McMullet, and Dino. He had an Infowars true believer who sat there and objected needlessly over and over again, even though some of them were sustained, who was perceived as haranguing and insulting people who the jury were instructed to treat as victims. Right. This would have been a bad strategy if liability were contested. But it was a terrible strategy when liability was conceded. When right, the jury hates you, Alex Jones, and hates your lawyer and is seething, watching you for weeks sit there in a lawsuit in which you have accused of and adjudicated liable for defaming plaintiffs over and over again and said, yeah,

0:25:35 Thomas: Are

0:26:22 Andrew: All right, enough is enough. It turns out enough was enough.

0:26:28 Thomas: Well, why don't we take a quick break and then we'll carry on enjoying a very bad person's predicament. This episode has brought to by the Jordan Harbinger Show. The Jordan Harbingers Show features in-depth interviews with some of the world's most fascinating minds, like Neil deGrasse Tyson, perhaps Anderson Cooper. There's a million of, there's so many of them, check them all out. Podcast dives deeper than most interviewers, it's clear that Jordan really prepares for each one. Addition, every Friday, Jordan also releases a Feedback Friday episode. With in those episodes, he responds to listener questions, covering everything from conventional problems, like leaving a dream job, to doozies, someone escape an abusive relationship. Relationship. So whether Jordan is conducting an interview or giving advice to a listener, you'll find something useful that you can apply to your own life in every single episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show.

0:27:19 Thomas: That could mean learning how to advice, ask the right way, or it could just be discovering a slight mindset tweak that changes how you see the world. So search for the the Jordan Harbinger Show, that's H-A-R-B as in boy, I-N as in Nancy, G-E-R, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

0:27:37 Thomas: I got a question. I, at this point, should I be rooting for Alex Jones to be crowdfunding, because I don't know that he has a billion dollars after all is said and done, you know? But, like, anything he did now, any Patreon, any, you know, GoFundMe, that would be real easy for the whoever's does this job, I don't know, to say, like, oh, look at that, that's more money that we can go after. So if he crowdfunds right now, isn't that like his audience paying the, uh, victims' families, like, directly almost?

0:28:03 Andrew: Almost is. So there are two ways in which he could do that. Number one, he could do that through the existing network that he has with InfoWars free speech systems, at which point it becomes property of the debtor's estate. And he's never getting anything back out of the debtor's estate. So that be a desirable result. If he tries to do an end run around the system, think right?

If I understand the Knowledge Fight guys directly, I have to ask them about this, but Alex Jones got $10 million in Bitcoin or he bragged about ostensibly receiving $10 billion in Bitcoin from some who the Knowledge Flight guys suspect might be Peter Thiel, right, it, turned out to be like eight or nine million by the time he actually cashed out because, you Bitcoin, um. So now the question is, right, what if he goes on Patreon, right? What if he tries to crowdfund not through the info war system again, not a collections attorney, but but here's what I would do as somebody who's not a connections attorney, right? Somebody who does this for a living could probably think of a half dozen things that, that sort of go beyond that.

So the first thing you do when someone isn't satisfying your judgments is you request post-judgment discovery, okay? And that is, I demand that you produce a witness or yourself to come in and sit down and tell me where all your assets are. That, again, is under penalty of perjury and subject to the various jurisdictions.

0:28:38 Thomas: Oh, My god, really? Yeah,

0:29:31 Andrew: So you would probably want to file that in Texas so that when Alex Jones doesn't show up for that, because there's not a chance he would, you can get a bench warrant for his arrest until he shows up for his deposition. And yes, I have seen cases in which folks have been held in jail pending showing up to answer as they thought. They they were just not going to answer questions about where their assets are. So item number one, seek post-judgment discovery to find out where Alex Jones's assets are. Item number two, you take reasonable guesses. OK,

0:30:08 Thomas: Well, also keep in mind that any person involved in this could watch, watch InfoWars all day, just like see where he's asking people for money, right? I mean, it should be pretty easy. It's not like he's on a secret channel.

0:30:18 Andrew: Right, right. But the question is, where is he storing it? Very first thing I would do is I would look for every bank within five miles of Alex Jones's house, and I would send over the same writ of attachment. Right. That says you are hereby on notice that your customer, Alex E. Jones, you know, blah, blah, blah. See attached judgment for nine hundred and sixty-five million dollars. And then you will get one of two responses. Either the bank will say, we don't have a customer named Alex, oh, I'm sorry, my bad. Or they'll say, yep, done, right? Attached,

0:30:52 Thomas: Well, just send it to every bank in the world. I mean it's the internet. Reply all email list every. Two banks.

0:31:01 Andrew: You You certainly could do that, number three, right? If he's, if he doesn't, let's say he does it on a Patreon, right, and we want to figure out what that routing number is, is third-party subpoena to Patreon. Hey, turn over the routing number of Alex E. Jones. Be trivially easy, and courts retain jurisdiction to do things like this after a damage award has been awarded. So, I want to go back, because, right, we're going to see, and Alex Jones is invested and already has, know, gone you on his stupid show and said stupid shit, um, we're to see him pull all the tricks that rich people use to evade the law, but this, he, he doesn't have any special magic tricks up his sleeve, right, and a lot of those tricks he's already tried to set up and done so incompetently and lost on So

0:31:49 Thomas: But I got a question. I do get that you're saying, oh, you got to know where he's storing it. Well, let's say you know, because you can just watch info wars that he's doing some sort of fundraisy thing with any given website thingy. Now let's says he does that and pulls the money out, are you able to tell GoFundMe or Patreon or whatever and be like, you need to tell me the routing number of where he put that money as well, can you get that information?

0:32:14 Andrew: Right, if it goes into Patreon, Patreon pays it out by wiring it to a particular account, and yeah, you can absolutely get the court to

0:32:19 Thomas: Right, So it feels like you could just follow that chain, you by subsequent subpoenas and subpoenas, coladas.

0:32:26 Andrew: There's... there's gonna be a lot of subpoena coladas going on here. The next stage that has already been teed up is, you this is how liberals hate free speech, and this is the worst violation of it. Here's what I want you to know. This And is The Judo Move. I just want everybody who listens to the show to repeat this over and over again. And that is, oh, you're concerned about it being too easy to sue the media? I completely agree. I'm glad we're on the same side because, you know, Clarence Thomas and Donald Trump want to repeal the New York Times v. Sullivan standard, and they want to make it even easier to sue the media. There's a case pending before the Supreme Court right now that would eliminate Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that would make it easier to sue online media platforms. So I'm with you. Let's be strong for free speech. Let's look for something here, but let's make sure that we're standing strong and not eroding our institutions by making it incredibly easy to sue the media.

0:32:37 Thomas: Yeah. All

0:33:32 Andrew: Rock back, Uncle Frank, a little bit. And we're going to do a breakdown of the Section 230 case that's pending. And we are, I promise, going to dive into the meat of the onion amicus brief that I've had to continue to push back because there's just too much stuff going on. But the right wing right now, the most dangerous thing that they want to do is the thing that fascists want, which is to make it easier to sue the press, to make het harder to criticize dear leader. And the fact that they now have some cognitive dissonance because now they're angry about people suing the press is a thing we and can should weaponize and use against them.

0:34:10 Thomas: Right. I love it. I also love the irony that something called free speech systems is going to have to pay for Alex Jones's speech. How's

0:34:17 Andrew: I love that.

0:34:19 Clip: Don't what you're talking about. Hey, Cookie, more pecan sauce. This ain't paste pecan sauce. What's the difference? Cookie, paste pecan sauce is made in San Antonio, with fresh vegetables and spices by people who know what pecan sauce is supposed to taste like. This stuff's made in New York City? New York City! Get a rope. Pick up the original pecan sauce. Pick up the paste.

0:34:46 Thomas: Andrew, why did we play this clip from my childhood for some reason, that's a, I mean, kind of reasonably funny commercial.

0:34:52 Andrew: Because we're going to talk about the California Unfair Trade Practices Act. And we're going to talk about designations of origin, because you are about to hear about a lawsuit that is designed to whip you up into a frenzy. And I am going to tell you, you should have the opposite approach. It's going to be hard because, admittedly, there are some elements of this latest lawsuit that are a little bit dumb. Uh-huh. But nevertheless, I want you to stay strong and have the OA position. And I'm going to persuade you that it absolutely is not a frivolous lawsuit, and to take the contrarian position with your friends, because you're about to get bombarded. We've already started to see this have some social media presence.

0:35:39 Andrew: So with a case that I think nobody would disagree with, let's, which, imagine that I start up a business in which I fill up water from the hose in my backyard and I sell it as Glacier Springs Water, fresh from Nome, Alaska. Yeah,

0:35:51 Thomas: All right, I'll register the, uh, the trademark, are we doing this, this is a good good idea, yeah,

0:35:59 Andrew: Glacier Springs Water LLC, And right? It is not Glaciar Springs Water from

0:36:04 Thomas: Well, arguably it may be, there was a glacier involved in some time in the past in the water, right, right,

0:36:08 Andrew: There could be. What it really is is mostly clean hose water from Arbutus, Maryland, I don't think any of us would have any issue with a company that said Glacier Springs water, Nome, Alaska, and then, you know, turned out that they were filling water out of a hose. That would be an unfair trade practice. Let me read you the law. This is California Business and Professions Code Section 17200, which prohibits unfair competition and provides in pertinent part that, quote, Quote, unfair competition shall meet and include unlawful, unfair, fraudulent business practices and unfair, deceptive, untrue or misleading advertising. OK, that's the standard. And you would say, yeah, this kind of seems like it's at least misleading advertising,

0:36:13 Thomas: But Puffery,

0:36:54 Andrew: And that's that's the opposite. These are factual questions. So let's make this a little harder. Right. And we're before we get to the case that everyone is going to be talking about. This case is called Peacock versus Pabst, 2018 case. In fact, the aftermath still going is on and it involves Olympia beer, which if you have been a listener of the show since the beginning, I have obliquely referenced Olympia beer in one of the Q&As because it was available at the local shop that would look the other way when GW students who were very obviously not 21 would come in to buy alcohol.

0:37:31 Thomas: I hope that statue of limitations is, uh, up.

0:37:34 Andrew: All That's that has long since run and the that poor little house has been raised and Olympia beer, I'm I'm a hundred percent not making this up, when I was a freshman in college in '19 you could buy for four dollars a case that is 16 cents a beer and when, when you would show up at a party, like, your contributions were measured by volume, not by dollar, right? So you you did not show up uh right yeah, you'd say, like, oh, hey, I'll bring a case of beer, and like, you know, somebody would bring, you know, Old Milwaukee, uh, and somebody would bring, oh, yeah, and when Pabst Blue Ribbon, all that good good stuff, right?

And and when you brought Olympia, people knew, right? You truly went to to the bottom of the bottom shelf. And I am sure we are going to get hate mail, and I love this, please do, if you are a fan of Olympian beer, I love it, please write to the show, because I come from Baltimore, my hometown, um, and my hometown we love National Bohemian beer, which is indistinguishably terrible from, from Olympic, from PBR, from all these terrible beers we're going to be talking. And I do have have a love for, right, it. There are plenty of times when I have drank a natty bow out at the ballpark. So,

0:37:49 Thomas: Wow jeez, yeah you, I'll buy this round you're a cheap piece of crap, yeah no, there's

0:38:45 Andrew: Yeah,

0:38:46 Thomas: Actually only one beer I don't drink and it's Bud Light, like, I'll drink any other light beer, I will not, I will não participar em o que chamam o as que a nação parece chamar of beer, which is, but it's not anything, it's nothing yellow water it's nothing, it's absolutely nothing yeah

0:38:49 Andrew: Oh, yeah. I'm with you on that. Yeah, right. Exactly. Somebody tosses me an Olympia right now, I will shotgun it. Okay, so, um, so named because it is from Olympian, Washington, um, the slogan used to b- it's the water, which we would start to, it's water but but, look, like the Olympic people, they have a story, okay, begins in 1896 with Leopold Schmidt, who was a German immigrant who built a four-story wooden brew house in Olympia, Washington, I'm getting this off of Wikipedia, okay, he began cranking out beer, uh,

0:39:06 Thomas: Or is it, yeah it's water yeah, who hated beer absolutely detested

0:39:37 Andrew: You know back

0:39:37 Thomas: Beer wanted to prove that anybody could make it. I just imagine the like perennial a cheap beer, you know, like story that they would have have, that's true yeah yeah, if you didn't die from drinking it, it was a success, oh

0:39:45 Andrew: 1896, anything that didn't give you dysentery was you know, right right, so 20 years, cranked out the beer. Washington was one of the very first states to enact state-level prohibition. They prohibited alcohol beer in 1916, yeah.

0:39:59 Thomas: Huh, really I would never have guessed that, not like Mississippi, or you know, nothing. Wow. Washington.

0:40:03 Andrew: I didn't know that either until ended 1934. They reopened the Olympia brewery, beer, at a facility called the Tumwater facility. It was, I'm 100% not making this up, brewed with water obtained from artesian wells. And they advertised that throughout the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s. And at this point, I will let Wikipedia take over. Quote, the company's promotions made much of the use of artesian water in the brewing process. One later advertising campaign, rather than explaining what artesian water was, claimed that the water was controlled by a mythical population of artesians, end of quote. And, as befitting a beer that went national in the 1970s, which is about the same time as Cores, by the way, like, before the 1970s you could not get a Cores, uh, east of the Rockies, right, they were just a regional brand. Olympia partnered with, do you know who Evel Knievel is?

0:40:49 Thomas: Yeah of course I know who Evel Knievel is, I'm not old enough to have ever seen him do anything thing, but yeah yeah

0:40:57 Andrew: Okay I just make it sure I write, much parodied on The Simpsons but yeah, he rode the motorcycle through the flaming hoop, right, um and he wore Olympia beer, that was his sponsor, his parachute, Olympia beer, right, that. So that was their guy, Evel Knievel, and you pretty much know what happens next, Olympia, right? Goes national as a cheap beer. They make inroads all the country. Right about the time that people start to realize, oh, hey, I can drink other things that have flavor. So in 1983, they were acquired by the G. Heileman Brewing Company. G. Heileman made old-style beer, beer, which if you recall the scenes in Better Call Saul where Jimmy shows up with the six-pack of cheap beer every time he's back in Chicago, that's old-style beer. It's very similar to Olympia beer.

0:41:08 Thomas: Oh that's the actual brand name, the

0:41:54 Andrew: That's the brand name that Highland made, old- style.

0:41:54 Thomas: Oh. Okay I thought you were saying like it's literally like an old style of beer, I was uh

0:41:58 Andrew: No, no, no. It was called Old Old style, and again it has the same relationship to Chicago that, uh, natty bow has to Baltimore and Olympia has to Washington, right? Like, local natty, natty lies, say National Bohemian, Natty Beau, Natty so 1983 G. Heileman, uh, buys them up, oh, fun fact. In fact, G.

0:42:11 Thomas: What's this natty bow, we have Natty Light ah okay, okay nazi

0:42:20 Andrew: Heilemann also, nice, they they were the first to make LaCroix water. They have since obviously spun off that brand to, but yeah, LaCROIX was better beer than Bud Light, no question. Question. Stroh's in 1996, if you remember Stroh's, a classic, cheap, nasty American lager. Most of Stroh's was bought by Pabst in 1989. We have already been down Pabts

0:42:21 Thomas: No I just, I just, go, I'm just playing the numbers, La Croix water better beer than Bud Light, I don't, well there you go would one of these companies buy a good beer, they're just like, we only buy exclusively terrible beer, it's what we we know, it's the, it's our specialty.

0:43:00 Andrew: Well, hilariously, here's what happened. All of these companies that bought all of these brands decided, and this is truly fascinating, deserves its own episode, in the early 2000s, to contract out the manufacturing of their beer to what was then Miller Brewing Company, because they all realized they're doing the same thing with the same ingredients in the same, right, like, so why not have somebody do it way faster than you way cheaper than you, way better than you economy of scale. Miller Brewing Company, which became SAB Miller, then Miller Coors is now Molson Coors. They make all of these, right? Okay. They do that because, you know, antitrust is dead, right?

0:43:29 Thomas: Yeah. Economy of scale.

0:43:42 Andrew: So during that run, right, when these breweries basically became virtual companies. You contracted with Miller Coors to make your beer, you don't need your brewery anymore. So they sold off the brewery, Olympia, Stroh's, whatever, sold off the original Olympia brewery which Miller first bought, and then they were like, oh, this thing is a four-story firehouse from 1894. We can't use this. They gutted the equipment. The machinery was sold off to an ethanol plant and now, and you know, nobody knows where the hell you make Olympia beer. Spoiler for the end of this. Nobody makes Olympia beer anymore, but we'll get to that. I don't know what happened to the artesian wells. But

0:43:41 Thomas: Yeah, there's a lot of things I don't mind being artesian. A well isn't really one of them. That just sounds like it would be, you dirty, like a dug out by hand rock thing. Like give me a nice clean well. I don't need an artisanal well.

0:44:35 Andrew: It turns out, artesian well has a precise legal definition. Yeah. Yeah. Any confined underground aquifer containing groundwater that is under positive pressure. So in other words, if there's water trapped underground, that's called an artesian aquifer. And if you drill into that well and it comes on up, that is called an artesian well. So there you go. Yeah. Not just saying like, oh, you know, this is made by hippies or whatever, but

0:44:40 Thomas: Whoa, really? Okay. Okay. Yeah. Do I not know what artesian means? What is, what is, that just sounds like any water that you find. What's the artesian part of it?

0:45:06 Andrew: Well well uh the fact that it is entirely contained and that it's under positive pressure. So As of sometime in the mid-2000s, you have Olympia Beer that's brewed God knows where, right? It's in these giant vats with the PBR and the Hams and the Old Style, and you know, all the other stuff stuff that Molson Coors makes, and no longer made at Olympia. And that brings us to our first lawsuit. And here, let's just quote from the court. Defendants' labeling at the top of the Olympia Beer can displays the phrase, "The Original Olympia Beer."

0:45:17 Thomas: Okay.

0:45:47 Thomas: So that was a lie.

0:45:49 Andrew: Beneath this text waterfalls is similar to those at the site of the original brewery in Washington. At the bottom of the can is the slogan, it's the water, Leftover from the artesian wells. Taken together, Plaintiff alleges that he was deceived by the labeling on the can that Olympia beer is brewed with artesian water from the Olympia area of Washington. Now, how does it strike you as an unfair trade practice?

0:45:58 Thomas: Yeah.

0:46:11 Thomas: Well, my first thought is based on what you said was an artesian well, a waterfall already couldn't be that for but I don't know if that matters legally speaking.

0:46:20 Andrew: I'm trying to describe a label, so like the waterfall is kind of going over this, boy, how do I

0:46:26 Thomas: Okay, well, We'll assume that the waterfall is the positive

0:46:28 Andrew: It's meant to evoke the original brewery. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah.

0:46:33 Thomas: Well, it doesn't sound like it's original anymore at all. I don't know how much that matters. You know, I don'T know. It doesn't strike me as like that egregious relative to what I know America does. You know? Like there's stuff people sell as medicine that's nothing. You know. Like people can get away with that. But I guess alcohol might be more tightly regulated. I don't know. Wow.

0:46:53 Andrew: Think You've sort of hit at where the court winds up, and I'll just read from the court decision, "California courts have recognized that whether a business practice is deceptive will usually be a question of fact, not appropriate for decision on demur, dismiss. On Because this determination requires consideration and weighing of evidence, courts rarely grant a motion to dismiss under the reasonable consumer test." Right?

0:47:16 Thomas: Because you need to ask a jury what a reasonable consumer is, not just have a judge decide.

0:47:17 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly right, that's, what their job is, right, to say like, yeah, does this facially kind of seem like probably enough for us to want to go to a jury, or, um, is this a frivolous lawsuit, should this just get the hell out of here, right? And the, ultimately what the court decided in the Olympian brewing case was, you know what, this should probably go to a jury. And I think the judge kind of went through a lot of what you were going through, right, this the most egregious thing in the world? World? Well, it's probably not the most egregious thing in the world. But should we, at least, ought to hear evidence about whether people are deceived in thinking that this delightful beer for $4 a case is brewed with artesian water from the underground well, the great underground wells of Olympia, Washington? Let's hear that. Court denied the motion motion to dismiss. And ultimately what happened, this will not surprise you, is that Miller Coors decided that they were no longer going to produce Olympia beer, right?

0:48:19 Thomas: Look, it's really not that important to us. We'll just stop. No one's drinking it anyway. It hasn't sold a single case in decades.

0:48:22 Andrew: Yeah, okay, okay. Yeah, That's right. And, and then the plaintiffs were like, well, wait, you might bring it back. And the court, you knows, was subsequently like, well, you know, look, if they bring it back, sue them again, we'll let you have standing, but but until then, you know, you don't have a concrete injury because they're not making the stuff anymore, um, congratulations, you won, right? Like, from a from a consumer perspective, right, that's that's a win, there's no longer, you know, a giant company out there pretending that they're of brew that of beer brewed in, you know, wherever it is, actually, uh, from, you know, upstate Washington. So So that brings us to the lawsuit that is going around the Internet, White versus T.W. Gardner Food Company. And this is Philip White, who is suing Texas Pete Hot Sauce.

0:49:09 Thomas: I really hope that's a guy. It's Texas Pete hot sauce. Run run for your lives.

0:49:15 Andrew: Texas Pete hot sauce is any one of, you know, kind of an indistinguishable number of brands. A Franks guy myself, but there's nothing wrong with Texas Pete. It's cayenne peppers, vinegar, sugar, and water. It is a huge, huge player in the hot sauce market. And as you might imagine, the gravamen of the complaint is Texas Pete hot sauce is not made in Texas, does not use ingredients from Texas. It is, in fact, it would be perfect if it were were made in New York City. But it was made in North Carolina with North Carolina ingredients. This is the internet's latest cause celeb of, you know, frivolous lawsuits of, come on, you don't want to, what But when you dig into the allegations, right, the allegations seem to favor at least wanting to know some things about this, might say, right?

0:50:05 Andrew: Okay, I get that, would you want to have a distinction between, maybe even a distinction of where your water is from on your beer. But how could it possibly matter whether the peppers in your hot sauce come from Texas or not? The plaintiff And here says, well, look, let's turn that one around. You're calling this Texas Peat to trade on the idea that people associate Texis, Tex-Mex food, making peppers, with making good sauce, right? And so if you were not counting on this to be potentially deceptive to consumers, you you wouldn't have called it that. And and I have a couple of pieces of evidence that are really, really hard to to argue with. So one of them is on the Texas Pete website is The Legend of Texas Pete, sorry, reprint it from a fawning review.

0:50:54 Andrew: And it begins with, with a name like Texas Pete, one would think the famed hot sauce is manufactured somewhere in the Lone Star State.

0:51:03 Andrew: How is it that a tasty red pepper sauce made in North Carolina happens to be named Texas Pete anyway? The answer is simple. When trying to think of a name, defendant's founders chose Texas because it, quote, had a reputation for spicy cuisine. In revealing the thought process behind its brand name, defendant admits that Texas's reputation was one they were trying to mimic and capitalize on when creating their brand. That is, those are paragraphs 48 and 49 from the complaint on pages 16 to 17. Um, you know, there's a lot the in in the lawsuit uh that I don't, I, you don't know that I'm a hundred percent certain about, but I know that when I went back to get the immediate, the first thing I thought of was the Pace Picante Sauce commercials, uh from from our childhood and and when I when was a kid, I get it. Yeah.

0:51:44 Thomas: Yeah. Yes. From our childhood.

0:51:48 Andrew: From our collective childhood, Thomas, and I, who are exactly the same age, we're growing up together. Uh, I remembered that the fantastic, you Get a Rope line, because it's great, uh, but

0:51:52 Thomas: Do you remember the famous Ragu V Prego? What is it? Prego Wars. Those as a kid, I thought those two, each commercial made me think, well, that other tomato sauce is just absolute garbage, just complete garbage. And then the other one come on. I'm like, oh, wait a minute. I don't know who to believe.

0:52:14 Andrew: Oh, I I was Prego man, uh, back then, that was college, college years and

0:52:17 Thomas: If I was Raghu, what would happen? Oh, a house torn asunder. Podcast over.

0:52:21 Andrew: Yeah. Ragu is the Pepsi of the Ragu. And mean that sincerely. Like, it's sweeter than Prego.

0:52:28 Thomas: Leave it to you to actually know that.

0:52:30 Andrew: We did a taste test. Anyway, of course we did. So. I was immediately inspired to go back and review the commercial. And I had remembered the Get a Rope line. I had forgotten that all of those Pace commercials trade on, right? Have the line built in that says, why, Pace Picante Sauce is made in San Antonio from folks who know how, you know, salsa is supposed to taste. And they did multiple series of those ads, – so Get a Rope was the best. There was one in which they implied that they were going to mark someone with a branding iron for handing over the wrong kind of salsa. There was 1.

0:53:09 Thomas: These guys are frigging hardcore about their salsa. Jeez.

0:53:10 Andrew: Oh, No, these are you should look up the paste

0:53:13 Thomas: I would argue they're taking this a little too seriously, Andrew.

0:53:15 Andrew: They are. There's a little bit of an overreaction problem here. Struck me how entwined that marketing was with Texas, this and um, I think that the lawsuit probably ought to go forward. They probably ought to be able to find out, you are consumers genuinely confused by this, are is there any real evidence, uh, that, you know, folks would buy a brand based on the presence of Texas on the label, uh, that, they wouldn't buy the exact same sauce if this was called, you North Carolina Pete or whatever.

0:53:48 Thomas: Yeah.

0:53:49 Andrew: Think it's crazy for a law firm to want to try and say, put this to the test. You are about to, this is going to be McDonald's all over again. We're going to be the only people on that side. So that is how we get from, again, and getting from cheap beer to hot sauce is not usually a tough line to draw to begin with. But but that's how we do it.

0:54:07 Thomas: So no predictions or anything.

0:54:09 Andrew: The lawsuit was literally just filed in federal court, um, about a month ago, um, so we are pre-answer, uh, it, it is at the stage in which it has started to hit the Internet in terms of, you know, you wouldn't believe what these crazy lawyers are doing now. There will be a motion to dismiss filed by the makers of Texas Pete, T.W. Gardner Food Company. And my prediction is, on the basis of the Olympia case, that that motion to dismiss is denied and that the court says, you know what, the kinds of things that we need to know to figure out whether this is like cases that go this way or cases that are that way are fact specific. So, you know, let's let's develop the facts, go to discovery, move forward. And when And that happens, right, that's when, the Internet will go DEFCON one. And, you you'll be able to say, you calm down, everybody, have some beer, have some salsa, and, and we'll ride this out.

0:55:09 Clip: Oh, no associate of this firm has ever failed the bar exam. No kidding.

0:55:16 Thomas: And now it's time for T3BE. What an adventure this book has been. Love it. Looking forward to, you know, maybe I'll nail another one or not. We'll see. And for any new listeners, this is where each and every week I attempt to answer a bar question, because believe it or not, I'm not actually a lawyer. Let's see how how I do here.

0:55:35 Andrew: So, Thomas, driving his patrol car, Officer Jerry, not sure why that's relevant, saw a man reach into a woman's bag and remove a purse. Officer Jerry stopped his patrol car, got out, and walked quickly after the man, caught up with the man on a corner. Did Officer Jerry have a right to seize an expensive watch from the man's wrist after after Officer Jerry arrested the man and took the purse out of the man's pocket?

0:55:46 Thomas: Huh.

0:56:00 Thomas: Interesting. Wow.

0:56:02 Andrew: A, yes, it was in plain view. B, yes. He had reason to suspect that it was stolen. C, he lacked reason to suspect that he was stolen, so no. Or D, yes because the man in fact stole it.

0:56:17 Thomas: A woman's got a bag in which she carries a purse in I guess, uh, and

0:56:21 Andrew: I'm thinking it's like a clutch maybe in a larger bag, you know.

0:56:22 Thomas: Yeah yeah so Good old Officer Jerry, I like how he walked quickly after the man. They go to great pains to make this guy look like a total, you like the klutz or whatever. Officer Jerry's got off his, uh, oh, what's that, stupid? Uh, officer Jerry got off of his Segway, walked briskly after the person, eventually caught up 10 miles later. Uh, did he have the right to seize an expensive watch from the man's wrist after officer Jerry arrested the man and took the purse out of the man's pocket. Is a weird one. I don't know what part of the official proceedings this is. So if someone, like, is purse snatcher A, and an officer arrests them, mean, I assume there's some sort of process you'd have to go through of the victim identifying what they stole, right? I mean, otherwise you could just be like, yeah, everything he has, his wallet, everything, he stole that from me.

0:57:14 Thomas: You know, there's got to be some process to that, but maybe there's like, like, in the meantime, the officer can seize everything to sort that out later. But isn't that the same as just like returning in your stuff at the police station when you're booked or something? Don't I know. This is really confusing to me. I, I guess, trying to parse through all this on the on the logic that, like, maybe Officer Jerry is is taking everything that that reasonably could have been stolen so that it's, know, you up to the victim to maybe reclaim it or something, um, it seems like a watch that the man had put on, how quickly after the man caught up with a man, like, it seems reasonable that he could have put on a watch already, I don't know, from the from the purse, maybe. Maybe, uh, am I supposed to believe that, or am I supposed to think like, oh, this is just his watch? Cause usually the fact pattern would tell you that of these bar questions.

0:58:01 Thomas: They'd be like, it's not the woman's watch. So yes, it was in plain view. That seems wrong to me. I don't think that matters. Again, if he had put the purse in his pocket, is he free to go or? Uh, I don'T think that's it. B yes. He had reason to suspect those stolen. That seems pretty straightforward. C he lacked reason to expect that it was stolen. Or D yes, because the man in fact stole it. That's a bold claim. So it seems pretty clearly between B and C. I the way our law works is police do whatever. And then Clarence Thomas says it's fine. So by that logic, I think, I mean I think B he has reason to suspect, you know, it's reasonable to say, all right, maybe he snatched this person, put on the watch in it, maybe to try to get away with it. I don't know. Like, it seems like not unreasonable reasonable that you could do that. I don't know. I'll go with B. It's between B and C. I'd go with B. This is the weirdest book. These questions are very weird. That's final answer B.

0:58:50 Andrew: All right, final answer B. So if you'd like to play along with Thomas, you know how to do that. Just share this episode on social media. Include the hashtag T3BE. Include your guess, your reasons. Therefore, we will pick a winner. Shower that winner with never-ending fame and fortune. Fame and fortune not guaranteed.

0:59:04 Clip: And thank you, Let's go!

0:59:06 Thomas: And now it's time to thank our new patrons at patreon.com/law. Enjoying all the goodies, the ad-free episodes, the early episodes, Andrew's notes, a lot of movies coming up again soon. Boy, that creeps up on us each and every month.

0:59:18 Andrew: It sure does.

0:59:20 Thomas: And Andrew, why don't you start us off thanking the first half of our top patrons today

0:59:25 Andrew: And a think you to Atheistic Eagle Scout, Josh Studer, James Brucker, Todd, wishing Wishing every Clarence Thomas a very God rest his soul. Yeah, you can do that. Count Camps a lot. John. And finally, a big thank you to Adam Curry. Not that Adam Curry, The but best Adam Curry Thomas. Take it away.

0:59:45 Thomas: Thank you to Dave H John Skiffington Jason Hall Fala mala mala na ha mala mala I don't know what okay s I am Aston, Phil, Kieran, Martin, and Emma Zakoki, thank you so much, new patrons, hope you enjoy the goodies, appreciate your support. And that's our show. I'm sure we're envious of you listening in the future who have probably already seen the hearing that it's just about to start as we're recording. So we can't wait. And we'll, we'll, I think we'll watch it. Pretty sure we might check it out.

0:59:56 Andrew: Nice.

1:00:22 Thomas: If And there's any any sky falling emergency about it, I'm Sure we'll be up and recording or maybe it'll be the topic for next week's shows. We'll see. We'll see you then.

1:00:22 Andrew: I think so.

1:00:31 Clip: I move for a bad court thingy. You mean a mistrial? Yeah, that's why you're the judge and I'm the law talking guy.

1:01:05 Clip: www.openargs.com. Be sure to join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Yodel Mountain and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media LLC, all rights reserved. It is produced with the assistance of transcriptionist Heather Leverage, production assistant Ashley Smith, and additional contributions from Morgan Stringer and Debra Smith. Special thanks to Teresa Gomez, who runs our live shows and heads up the OA Wiki, follow at OA Wiki on Twitter. Additional thanks to the moderators of the Opening Arguments Facebook community, Emily Waters, Alicia Cook, Eric Brewer, Natalie Newell, Brian Ziegenhagen, and Teresa. And finally, thanks to Thomas Smith, who edits the show and created the fabulous theme music, which was used with permission.

1:01:49 Thomas: That or Adam Curry okay thank

1:01:49 Andrew: I don't know.