OA652: Another REALLY Bad Week for Alex Jones...

Transcript

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

0:01:17 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Open Arguments. This is, oh, what are we? Hello, Andrew. I'm Thomas. That's Andrew. I'm excited. First show of the new format officially. How are you doing?

0:01:29 Andrew: I'm great, it's episode 652, so,

0:01:32 Thomas: Oh yeah, I didn't even say it. I'm all discombobulated over the numbering. I was saying it somewhere else, I forget, but I get fixated on the stupidest things, as Andrew well knows. Where we're like discussing this whole new format and what we're going to do, and in my mind I'm just like, but are we keeping the numbering of the episodes, or this is the most meaningless part of it, but like I can't, I have to settle that part of it first before I can think of anything else. So we'll say it's 652. Yeah.

0:01:56 Andrew: Well, you and T. Gomes, this who, is the only thing I regret about us going to four episodes a week, is she was like, I am not going to be able to handle the entire OA Wiki with twice as many episodes. So if you've ever wanted to volunteer and get shout outs on the show and be mentioned in the same breath with the amazing Teresa Gomez, find however you want to find us and say, hey, I'm interested in helping volunteer for the OA Wiki. It is such an amazing resource and we would really appreciate it you think you can help out in that way.

0:02:10 Thomas: Oh. Totally. Volunteer for that, and there's the OA Wiki Twitter account. I don't know if you can DM that, I don't what the best way to get a hold of Theresa is, but we can certainly forward messages, but people, I don't think we've asked people for volunteers in a very long time for that. So maybe we'll have a bunch of people who are like, why didn't you tell me, would have been doing this the whole time? And then Teresa will command an army of Wikipedia-ers, of OA wiki-ers. I don't what the, there's got to be some name they have, catchy name for it. Anyway, I'm. This is our first of the new format, and means that we've got more stories to tell you. We're able to give you even more stories than we were already. And let's start off with some Alex Jones news.

0:02:49 Andrew: But Oh, I

0:03:08 Clip: I don't like them putting chemicals in the water, that turn the friggin' frogs gay, Hey.

0:03:12 Andrew: So last, last week we got a ruling from Judge Maya Gara Gamble in Texas that is the Hesslin case, and this was a motion for reconsideration on the punitive damages cap, and Judge Gamble indicated that she would uphold the entire $45 million dollars in punitive damages, despite uh, Texas's cap of 750,000 for punitive damages. And if you're wondering how she got there, she got their via two, two separate lines of reasoning. First, I, uh, was an equitable claim, right, this really feels a rare and extreme case. It certainly seems like if punitive damages are ever warranted, they should be warranted here, this ruling has not been made public. So this is one of the rare OAs in which I'm going, not on the document, but on the basis of what attorneys have, have said from the courtroom. So I'm a little reluctant to do that, but I've got good law for you. So I am going to make up for my lack of documents with having spent some time in the research library.

0:03:34 Thomas: Wow.

0:04:21 Andrew: Last Tuesday, Judge Gamble said that this verdict is a, quote, rare case in which the emotional damage inflicted on Ms. Lewis and Mr. Heslin was so severe that, quote. I believe they have no recourse, end of quote. And as a part of that equitable line of analysis, Judge Gara Gamble also said that she thinks that there are severe questions about the constitutionality of Texas's punitive damage statute.

0:04:52 Thomas: Yeah, no kidding. You said $750,000. Now, law question, is that just a blanket punitive for anything punitive? Or is there different categories of punitive? Or if, you if a corporation pollutes my drinking water and my entire family dies or whatever, or you think of many possible and probably actual cases where it's bazillion dollar corporations getting, doing something horrible, and then juries being like, yeah, you should pay them a billion dollars in punitive damages, and then it quietly getting reduced to 750,000, the, the median home value in California, you know, like, that it gets nowhere near what would actually punish, you know, the point I of it would actually punish a major corporation.

0:05:32 Andrew: Statute That's absolutely right, and look, this is what happens when you have one-party Republican rule in a state for three decades, is they put in statutes like this that are designed solely to benefit large corporations, to ensure that they cannot be deterred, that they face essentially no consequences from the most extreme and outrageous conduct, because it gets reduced to, to just about nothing. So, uh, to answer that question specifically, uh, this is section 41.008 of the Texas Civil Practices and Remedies Code, and subsection B says exemplary damages awarded against a defendant may not exceed an amount equal to the greater of, and then one is two times the economic damages plus an amount equal to any non-economic damages, not to exceed $750,000, or $200,000.

0:06:39 Thomas: Trying to work out that math on the flight. Does that mean if there was a big economic penalty with one of these hypothetical cases I'm talking about, then I guess, does that mean the punitive could be way higher?

0:06:49 Andrew: Yeah, this is the B1A and B. So B1 A says you get twice your economic damages. So let's say your economic damages are a million dollars, right? That would be $2 million plus B1 B an amount equal to any non-economic damages found by the jury not to exceed $750,000.

0:07:12 Thomas: And that whole thing, put a bracket around that whole think, are you say you get it, are saying that's an automatic thing or this is the cap? The cap, okay,

0:07:16 Andrew: Is the cap, right? So if you were awarded a million dollars in economic damages, and a million in non-economic damages, the operation of B1 A and B would get you $2,750,00 as the cap on punitive damages, okay? Now, economic damages are defined incredibly narrowly under Texas statute, So right? Everything that you typically see awarded in, for example, large class action cases winds in that category of non-economic damages, right. Pain and suffering damages, for ejemplo, are considered non- economic damages. Is. Your hospital bill is considered an economic damage, right?

0:07:37 Thomas: Right, okay Yeah. Yeah. And then I imagine there's like the amount if you you know, if a corporation kills somebody, there's like that actuarial table of amounts that that it's worth. And the thing is, that's just not going to be anything when it comes to a major corporation. Right.

0:08:20 Andrew: That's exactly right. In the immediately preceding chapter, 41.001, here's the definition. So let's just make this is absolutely clear. Economic damages means compensatory damages intended to compensate a claimant for actual economic or pecuniary losses. The term does not include exemplary damages or non-economic damages. So, okay, now let's read what non-economic damages are? Non-economic damages means damages awarded for the purpose of compensating a claimante for physical pain and suffering, mental or emotional pain or anguish, loss of consortium, right, that is, uh, they've killed your wife, right, disfigurement,

0:09:01 Thomas: Wow. That's a boy. The law really is empathetic. Oh, I see you suffered some loss of consortium. Yeah, my entire family was killed by McDonald's or something. I don't know what You know what? The good name of McDonald's. What's an evil corporation that I can pick as an example? Oh, all of them. My family was killed by any of the other corporations, including McDonald's, by the way.

0:09:02 Andrew: Yep, yep.

0:09:23 Andrew: Disfigument, right, permanent, Physical injury, right, physical impairment, loss of companionship and society, inconvenience, loss of enjoyment of life, right, so there's your wrongful death, like most of the damages from wrongful death, injury to reputation, and all other non-pecuniary losses of any kind other than exemplary damages. And those are also excluded. Exemplary damages are defined as any damages awarded as a penalty or by way of punishment but not for compensatory purposes. So let's unpack all of that. Your economic damages are a way of busting the cap, but Texas has defined economic damages to exclude almost everything that actually happens to people in lawsuits, right? It is your actual out-of-pocket losses.

0:09:24 Thomas: Yeah.

0:10:11 Andrew: And that's why the economic damages, the compensatory damages, were so low in this Texas case. It, right, was everything. The jury, as is obvious by the $45 million punitive damage award, the jury wanted to find every means possible to compensate these plaintiffs. But based under Texas law, the economic damages, you were really limited to their therapy bills, for example. Well, if I have PTSD, right, and that renders me permanently disabled as a result of Alex Jones sicking his minions on me day after day with respect to my dead kid for a decade, right? My therapy bills are not a measure of how much I've suffered at your hands, right.

But the therapy bills wind up under the economic damages component. So let's go back to that cap. That cap says you get twice that incredibly narrowly tailored definition of actual damages plus your non-economic damages, that is everything else, not to exceed $750,000. And you add those together. And this case we're looking at essentially on the order of $750,000, Because right? There is a tiny amount that the jury has identified as economic damages. But the big thing that happened here was these people's lives were wrecked, right? They didn't suffer the loss of a business contract. They didn'T suffer cleaning out their bank accounts.

0:10:56 Thomas: Yeah, that's

0:11:45 Andrew: What they suffered was what people always suffer when they wind up the victim of a large corporation, mental right, pain, anguish. Long-term, I'm using disfigurement, that that but will include, you know, long-term PTSD, right? All of that stuff. And all of that staff is subject to the $750,000 cap.

0:12:07 Thomas: Nuts.

0:12:08 Andrew: It's absolutely nuts. So the first set of arguments that Judge Campbell found was, this seems like a case for equitable reasons where I, in my discretion, ought to toss that out. That's going to be a hard argument to sustain on appeal, but

0:12:20 Thomas: I was going to say, yeah, is that just a thing you can do? I mean, when there's a law like this that really spells out in great detail the amount that we're not going to make corporations pay because we're Texas and we like corporations and don't want them to ever be hurt by some poor, you families of dead children. So is there any discretionary language in there that I missed?

0:12:41 Andrew: And so that's going to be a challenge. There's a second portion to the ruling, and this I think has a slightly better chance of surviving, and that is related to subsection C, are 17 statutory exceptions to that cap. It says the cap doesn't apply when you have, and here let me read the language directly, this section, the cap, does not apply to a cause of action against a defendant for whom a plaintiff seeks recovery or exemplary damages based on conduct described as a felony in the following sections of the penal code, or one of them that I'm about to read, if the conduct was committed knowingly or intentionally.

0:13:26 Andrew: And those are murder, capital murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated assault, and you're sitting there thinking like, okay, well, none of these really feel like they're particularly applicable, but section 7, right, so this is 41.008 c 7 says injury to a child, elderly individual, or disabled individual, but not if the conduct occurred while proving health care is defined by blah, blah, which didn't happen. And Judge Gamble said folks were suffering PTSD and qualify as disabled individuals for purpose of the exception.

0:13:35 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:07 Thomas: Okay, yeah, I was wondering how you're gonna, you're going to get there, but that makes sense.

0:14:11 Andrew: It Does. As far as I can tell, I have been through on Westlaw all of the 41.008 cases, and I have not seen this particular section litigated. So this will be a question of first impression for the Texas appellate courts. Does right? PTSD count as a disability for purposes of an exception to the punitive damages cap? And will be a really interesting question to litigate. Now, I want to temper your enthusiasm from a legal perspective, and then I want to explain kind of the overall context of this. So there are some bad cases in Texas. This should not surprise you. It's Texas, right? Under that section, what the plaintiff must show is they must show by clear and convincing evidence, as a factual matter, the defendant committed the actions that fall under that exception.

0:15:08 Andrew: Right. So here in knowingly or intentionally intended to cause injury to a disabled individual, and the usual way in which this happens is that is presented as a separate question to the jury. Along with all of the other juror questions. Right. I have found no case that fits this fact pattern. It's a jury trial. The jurors are deciding as a matter of fact who has what liability and to what degree. But then the judge was to make a separate factual determination for purposes of the cap. And I have found language that says that this portion of the exceptions only apply when there is a jury finding of – by clear and convincing evidence of knowingly or intentionally intending to cause injury to someone who is disabled.

0:15:26 Thomas: Okay.

0:16:09 Thomas: Do we know if they, the, put that question to the jury?

0:16:12 Andrew: Did not. This was Not part of the instructions. So, right? For example, the case of Lowry v. Tarbox, this is a 2017 Texas appellate case, says without a jury finding that the defendant intentionally or knowingly violated one of the provisions listed in 41.008C, the exceptions to the statutory cap on exemplary damages did not apply. Now, the plaintiffs here will argue that the judge is equally empowered to be a fact finder. This is a trial court. You put it all together and and that the judge has the discretion to take what the jury has said and construe that evidence accordingly.

0:16:12 Thomas: Oh. Okay. Hmm.

0:16:53 Andrew: Right. But it's, I just want to say, because we're about to get into, you know, the laugher of the Norm Pattis arguments. And I I want our listeners to understand that these are aggressive kind of uphill battles in terms of arguing against the law in a jurisdiction where the appellate courts are routinely used to saying, yeah, we we have punitive damage caps in Texas. That's a feature of being in Texas. It is ridiculous. It's part of why this ties into all of our election discussions, but it's part of why you have the ability to get involved. Don't start with, I'd like to run for Senate or the presidency. This is why getting involved at the state legislature level really, really matters. Arguments, listeners, who did that, this election cycle. I'd like to get, I've um, reached out to at least one of them, who, um, know, she and I've talked about her campaign and, and you, she won her campaign for state legislature.

0:17:15 Thomas: Yeah. It's just so ridiculous. God.

0:17:49 Thomas: Wow.

0:17:49 Andrew: And yeah, so, you KNOW, Even when you're in a deep red area, right, it is worth fighting the good fight. It is worth, uh standing up and sort of not rolling over and letting these things happen. And they make a real difference in real people's lives. So to be an uphill challenge, I think, on the law. But now let's put that into the larger context. Remember that all of this is going to Be playing out in the context of free speech systems and InfoWars bankruptcy, right?

It's a question of how you value those claims. And I think you You can now, with a straight face, go into the bankruptcy, and if you are the Texas plaintiff, say, yeah, we value our claim at $49 million. The trial judge has said these statutory damage caps do not apply, and until you get relief from the appellate courts, we are a $49-million creditor. And yeah, exactly right. Right. And back then, I thought you you would put some kind of an error bar over the whole thing, right? And call it 10 or 15 million and say, look, we think we have a non-frivolous, you know, appellate chance.

But right now, you have a much stronger argument. You have a trial court that said you have $49 million dollars in damages, go for it, and every incentive and every opportunity to have as many lawyers looking out for how Alex Jones is trying to evade and steal money and engage in fraudulent transfers. He's done this his entire life. He's done this in this case. He's doing this. He's going to continue to do it, right? He's doing it as we speak. And so empowering lawyers to say, yeah, know, let's follow the money is unambiguously good thing. So that happened on Tuesday.

0:18:44 Thomas: Yeah. This was that kind of one weird trick that you broke down for us a while back. Yeah.

0:19:42 Andrew: And at the same time we had development in the Connecticut case. A bunch of different things came out. So first, we had, and these are, I'm going to include them in the show notes, these are delightful pleadings to read. These are the findings made by disciplinary counsel against the conduct of Andino Reynal, that is McMullet, and of course, you Norm Pattis, in connection with the court's request for sanctions. So what happened was the judge in the Connecticut case referred out to the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel that falls under the purview of Brian B. Staines, right, who is a lawyer who is with the Connecticut courts, He's right? Got a judiciary.connecticut.gov email address, and right, he prepared a separate 26, 25-and-a-half-page memorandum for both of these buffoons laying out why Norm Pattis should be disciplined. And he recommends suspending from the practice of law for six months in Connecticut. And that Andino Raynal, McMullet, should be suspended for three months from the practice of law in Connecticut.

0:20:58 Thomas: The McMullet was what killed my family, actually, and why I was suing McDonald's. Never. Don't try that McMullett. It wasn't ready.

0:21:05 Andrew: Delightful in terms of they really do bend over backwards to try and identify, you as many counter arguments as possible. Right. And and when you read that, you're like, wow, this could not have happened to a nicer group of folks. Right. So, you in the Raynal memorandum, it says mitigating factors include the absence of a prior public disciplinary record and full and free disclosure to the disciplinary board and cooperative attitude towards these proceedings. That is all that that's Yeah.

0:21:36 Thomas: That's it. No charity work. No saving orphans. No.

0:21:41 Andrew: Yeah. Contrast that as to the slightly shorter sentence that is in the Norm Pettis memorandum, which says mitigated factors include the absence of a prior public disciplinary record and the initial disclosure to plaintiff's counsel, so that's

0:21:56 Thomas: They could have put McMullet's haircut as a mitigating factor, you know, plus look at his hair, like that's in the plus column, and now here's the other column, yeah you know like you hear that in your head every time I think that's what you hear all the time, he's, there's that Simpsons where it zooms in on Homer's brain, just that, hey, I think if we did that on yours it would be hair metal and a bunch of law terms that I don't remember what they mean.

0:22:01 Andrew: That yeah yeah every time you see his hair, you want to play that like heavy metal version of the Transformers theme there you go I do yeah Exactly right. So remember that what happened here was that the entire way in which the Texas plaintiffs wound up receiving, uh, this thumb drive containing Alex Jones's phone was because his lawyers, you know, bungled how they were distributing it and and left links active and all of that sort of stuff. Well, weren't, if Norm Pattis hadn't been transferring that information down to Andino Raynal in the first place, none of that would have happened, right?

And that runs afoul of Connecticut, and this is a model rule, Rule 3.4, Fairness to Opposing Party and Counsel, which says that a lawyer shall not, and this is subsection three, knowingly disobey an obligation under the rules of a tribunal, except for an open refusal based on an assertion that no valid obligation exists. And then Rule 1.0 defines knowingly as actual knowledge of the fact in question, a person's knowledge may be inferred from circumstances. Now you're thinking, I'm still not sure how that gets put together. Here's what the memorandum says. There is clear and convincing evidence, right?

That is the 75% standard, right, more than just preponderance of the evidence. There was clear and convincing evidence that Pattis, Norm Pattis, knowingly transferred Connecticut's plaintiff's discovery to a non-authorized individual. That is Andino, right. Reynal trying the case down in Texas. Pattis was aware of and subject to the protective order, that is the order saying you can't do that. He instructed his associate to transfer, without limitation, plaintiff's discovery to attorney Lee, and that is the, uh, attorney who was in the bankruptcy,

0:23:11 Thomas: Hmm.

0:24:07 Andrew: Who is not an authorized person to receive those documents with regard to this issue. Pattis was questioned as follows. Question, you read the protective order and you were familiar with that around that date? Answer, Norm Pattis, I'm exerting, asserting my rights as previously stated. On advice of counsel, I'm asserting my right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment, Article I, Section 8 of the Connecticut Constitution, and Section 51-35 via the Connecticut statutes.

0:24:21 Thomas: Yep. Yep. Question. You can do that in a sanctions thingy? Okay. Can

0:24:30 Andrew: Oh, yeah. Remember, you can plead the Fifth any time you want where

0:24:35 Thomas: I do it on a podcast?

0:24:35 Andrew: You can plea the Fifth on a podcast.

0:24:37 Thomas: Wow. If I don't like the T3BE, okay, I might just plead the Fifth, and then it's not like I got it wrong, so yeah.

0:24:43 Andrew: Remember what happens when you plead the Fourth in a non-criminal hearing.

0:24:44 Thomas: Wow. Uh, can be used against you, yeah.

0:24:51 Andrew: There you go. The court may draw an adverse inference for it, so, so let's read the rest of this. Question, you agreed to abide by the terms of the protective order? Answer, I'm asserting my rights as previously stated. Question, at the request of attorney Lee, that's the, uh, attorney in the bankruptcy case, you provided, or had your, an associate with your law firm, provide all of the needed discovery that you had received from attorney Mate, that's, sorry, that's the Connecticut plaintiff, to attorney Lee? Answer, I was asserting my rights as previously stated. Question, did you take any steps once you became aware that attorney Lee was provided all the information? Answer, I'm asserting my rights, as previously stated. Then back, or back to the memorandum provided by disciplinary counsel. Based on the substantial record, the court may make an adverse inference from Pattis' assertion of the Fifth Amendment, knowing that of the protective order, he nevertheless instructed his associate to turn over discovery to

0:24:54 Thomas: Can

0:25:41 Andrew: An unauthorized person and failed to take any steps to prevent further disclosure or secure the information there.

0:25:46 Thomas: So, so Pattis was trying to transfer some information to another lawyer in a, the bankruptcy case, in a different state. And why was he doing that? And then why wouldn't that have been allowed? I don't remember if

0:26:01 Andrew: Remember that Alex Jones, InfoWars, Free Speech Systems, and uh, some other LLCs declared bankruptcy on the eve of both trials as a mechanism to try and shut the trials down, because the automatic stay, when you, you have a party in bankruptcy, that stops somebody from going to, to court against you, because, right, the automatic stay in a bankruptcy prevents money from going in or out of a bankrupt estate. And so in connection with that, then there was some maneuvering back and forth, uh, the plaintiffs dismissed out some of the actual, uh, potentially bankrupt LLCs, right, alphabet, these uh entities that appeared to have no assets, right? But the bankruptcy went forward as against InfoWars, Free Speech Systems. And then they got an order, right, from the bankruptcy court that said, you may continue as against InfoWars and Free Speech System, right? Was engaged to handle the bankruptcy, and in particular, the bankruptcy with respect to the other, the Alphabet LLCs. And so in connection with that, Lease, Lee filed an affidavit that was basically like, it's my first day. But I'm

0:26:30 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm. I

0:27:21 Andrew: A bankruptcy dude. I was hired to take, you a couple of companies with no assets into bankruptcy. And I said, I don't know what the hell's going on here. Give me some help. And Norm Pattis said, OK, I'll have my associate. Yeah. Email you a thumb drive that has all the stuff you need on it.

0:27:36 Thomas: Gotcha. And what was that stuff? Just

0:27:40 Andrew: That Stuff was the dump of Alex Jones's phone, which Which, a, Was not produced in the litigation in which it should have been produced, right, and B was subject to a protective order that says you don't disclose the discovery in this case to non-parties to this case, right, and

0:27:45 Thomas: Huh? Huh.

0:27:59 Thomas: And is that a normal thing that happens or was that a special Alex Jonesy thing that happened?

0:28:03 Andrew: That, Is a, it does not say. Here, I'm glad you asked the question, um, because usually, right, discovery in a case is public domain, it's hard to find, uh, But cases are public, that information is public, uh,

0:28:14 Thomas: Yeah. Well, plus, it's it's both Alex Jones being involved. Aren't there normally like, you agreements across, you knows,

0:28:24 Andrew: That's exactly right. And And so the fact that there was a protective order here was almost certainly drafted by the parties. And by drafted by the parties, I mean very likely drafted by Alex Jones. So, yes, all of this could be. I do not know. OK, the record does not state.

0:28:46 Thomas: OK. Speculation.

0:28:48 Andrew: I do Not know that Alex Jones's lawyers drafted the initial protective order. That being said, I'd be shocked if it were the plaintiffs.

0:28:49 Thomas: Sure.

0:28:58 Thomas: OK, I get it. So their side would have been like, hey, anything in this one. On no sending to the other one under the, idea the that like, obviously that's going to be horrible Alex Jonesy stuff. And they want to maybe, even if they're going to get their asses kicked in one state, maybe they want To have a fighting chance in another state. And is that the logic? But then maybe they took on the language of, Hey, nobody do that. And then Norm Pattis forgot or something that he couldn't do it.

0:29:22 Andrew: That is exactly What has happened. Yes.

0:29:23 Thomas: Oh my gosh. That's so funny.

0:29:26 Andrew: And going beyond that, right, there are good reasons why Alex Jones, knowing, for example, that Knowledge Fight exists, that they have published 11 separate uh podcasts that use, use public domain depositions, and To make fun of them, that they wanted the most sensitive information kept under lock and key. And you can do that. I do that all the time, in right, my case. Like, you'll say, you'll have a business dispute, and the other side will say, you know, we want business records, and I'll say, okay, we'll give you the business records, but we want a confidentiality order that they're not attached to any public pleadings, and that when this case is over, you've got to destroy them or give them back, right?

0:29:40 Thomas: Yeah.

0:30:09 Thomas: So is Is that, is that like the special spice herbs and spices for the KFC recipe kind of, do you have that? Or can you tell me that? No. Okay. If you ever get your hands on the Crunchwrap formula, you, you will tell me, right? You got to tell me. We'll come up with our agreement now that you, ah, so good.

0:30:10 Andrew: Yeah, Exactly right. Yeah. Oh, I, I am, I am willing to get disbarred over tasty, tasty Crunchwraps. So,

0:30:30 Thomas: Had one today.

0:30:30 Andrew: Yeah. I had one last week.

0:30:32 Thomas: Could we get sponsored by Crunchwra- just, well, Taco Bell, but also specifically the Crunchw- okay. We'll look into it. Well, that's hilarious. I that is I had no idea why that would have been. And then you explained it so well. How and how much trouble is Norm?

0:30:34 Andrew: Norm Pattis is going to get suspended from the practice of law in his home state for six months.

0:30:46 Thomas: All right. So six months vacation from.

0:30:53 Andrew: Again, Norm Pattis, he a part of the like grift train, he's trying to be?

0:31:01 Thomas: Yeah, he's not as bad as Sidney Powell. Is that what you're going to say? Because she should just be banned from ever lying again. In and then he

0:31:05 Andrew: Yeah. Well, I haven't checked, but, uh, after we did Norm Pattis's podcast for Law and Awful Media, I went and discovered that this podcast, which is two plus years old, has a Patreon page, and I posted it to our Facebook group, and I said what I will say here, which is if any of you people get on and think you should give money to Norm Pattas as a goof, I will kick you off every bit of Opening Arguments Media. Like, this guy is evil and, has carried water for Alex Jones, and no matter how funny it is, you should not give him money as a goof. That being said, it's rather hilarious to me that he has 13 patrons, so so when you're asking, can Norm Pattis afford to be, uh, suspended from the practice of law for six months and just get by off of being an Alex Jones lackey? Uh, I think 13 patron, say, says no. Right, I don't, I don't want to go too far out on a limb there, but, but no, man, like, he's he's minor league grifter, you playing around with the big boys here, so

0:31:46 Thomas: Do we get a, uh, it's similar to how they do with, sex, the offender thing, where when you move somewhere, you got to tell everybody. Um, do they have anything like that with the sanctions, when he goes in for, to try to get another client, after the sanctions as you Hi, I was suspended from the practice of law for six months for being an incredibly shitty lawyer, but please hire me.

0:32:20 Andrew: Yes so Two things. Number one, the disciplinary action is a matter of public record and so is instantly discoverable to anybody looking at Norm Pattis. And number two, when he goes to represent anybody in any court outside of Connecticut, he will be required to disclose that disciplinary action undertaken against him when he comes to move Pro Hoc Vitae. And a court could look at that and go, oh, I'm denying your motion Pro Hock. You're not qualified to come in and practice, your own state doesn't want you, you know, get out of ours. And so, yeah, this will absolutely follow him around. You, yeah, know, is it the death penalty? It's not quite the death penalty. It was awfully fun to read about. So there is that. And then there is one more. And that is, remember, I had told you at the end of October, in fact, this again, we discussed on the Norm Pattis Lawed Awful Media podcast, that Norm had filed a motion to set aside the verdict and also a motion for remittance term. And we explained in detail what those things were.

Um, uh, the plaintiffs have now filed their, uh, reply memoranda, which are delightful, uh, and I will just say, uh, to, I'm gonna, I'm going to pass lightly over the remittitur action because, uh, as, as we explained on Law'd Awful Movies, remittitur is when you say

0:33:03 Thomas: That'll follow him

0:33:51 Andrew: Um, that the damage award is somehow, that was beyond the pale of the jury to award. The, right, law is super clear in Connecticut, as elsewhere, that it is only exercised in the most exceptional of circumstances. And the standard is, I'm going to read this, is from a Connecticut Supreme Court decision in 2019. Right. Recent, even by human standards, which says, the ultimate test that must be applied to the verdict by the trial court is whether the jury's award falls somewhere within the necessarily uncertain limits of just damages, or whether the size of the verdict so shocks the sense of justice as to compel the conclusion that the jury was influenced by partiality, prejudice, mistake, or corruption. This power should be exercised only when it is manifest that the jury has awarded damages that are contrary to law, not supported by proof, or contrary to the court's explicit and unchallenged instructions.

0:33:57 Thomas: Well not

0:34:52 Andrew: Instructions. It gets better. "Doing so is appropriate only when the court can articulate very clear, definite, and satisfactory reasons for such interference. This language is intended to convey the extraordinary departure from reasonableness that is required before a court may properly exercise its authority to set aside a jury's award of damages. Reviewing the verdict, the trial court is required to review the evidence in the light most favorable to sustaining the verdict." Okay, so there, there's your legal standard, um,

0:35:20 Thomas: Only that, to try to, I love the idea of them trying to poke holes in this. Look, all these other cases I see here where a powerful man with millions of dollars and millions of followers harassed the parents of children who had been murdered in a school, all those other cases, oh, there's not, this is singularly evil, and there's almost no other case law you could possibly point to that is the same as this unbelievably evil thing that someone did. Yeah. Good, good luck finding those, like, comparable cases, and then showing how, you the damages weren't as bad as all this.

0:35:50 Andrew: And so this brief, uh, is 407 pages long. Now, admittedly, almost 360 pages of that are supporting exhibits and, and, and trial court testimony, um, but the fact that there is so much is a pretty strong indication of the extent to which, which the evidence is just overwhelming and supported by the jury's verdict. So, for example, the factual pattern, right? Because, again, you know, you have to show that the jury was so disregarding of the facts that it shocks the conscience and causes you to infer fraud. So the sections are things like, as a result of the shooting, the plaintiffs were profoundly vulnerable. Defendants' lies about Sandy Hook targeted the plaintiff's greatest vulnerability.

0:36:36 Andrew: The defendants use their business infrastructure to spread those lies to a massive audience. The defendant's massive audience was groomed to believe the defendant's lies and to act upon them. The plaintiff's testimony, Alex Jones's testimony confirms the severity of the harm. And then, know, there's a section on the jury's conduct and extrinsic evidence. And then, like I said, there are 360 plus pages of exhibits that I think very, very clearly show that, you're not going to get remitted in this example.

And these run, there are 23 of them from the trial transcripts, from the deposition transcripts From the court's various sanctions orders This jury did its job And yeah, the number's large because what the defendants did were horrible So not concerned about the motion for remittitur As we discussed, there was also a motion to reconsider. And that raises a bunch of scattershot arguments. We evaluated most of them on Law'd Awful Movies. But but the one that we engaged with a little bit because it involves Nazi Mark Randazza was the argument that they were denied counsel of choice. And as Norm Pattis's motion puts it, this court's unusual decision to hold a show cause proceeding as counsel of record during the pendency of these proceedings. So, here's what Padas has argued. He said,

0:37:27 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:38:30 Andrew: His counsel of choice, even his efforts to have another admitted out-of-state lawyer, and, you know, Reynolds, met with failure. Attorney Reynold was admitted but denied a speaking role at trial, leading him ultimately to withdraw his application rather than pay the mandated attorney occupancy tax for the privilege of sitting in the gallery as a spectator. Okay, leaving aside everything you know about how Norm Pettis is a liar, uh, and Alex Jones is a lawyer, you might go, all right, um, there, there might be some there, there. Here's the response. This is page 24 of the response memorandum. And again, this is written by Eleanor Sterling. And Morgan really brought her to my attention as somebody who has done the heavy lifting in a lot of the brief writing in the, the Connecticut case, and Morgan was like, this lawyer writes really, really well, and I think, and that's right, and, and, and so I'm want to, I want to give a shout out, uh, to, to Morgan there, uh, for, for noticing this, um, page 24.

0:39:24 Andrew: The defendants try to reframe their gamesmanship as judicial error, making a series of arguments regarding their counsel. They assert that, that Alex Jones was denied his counsel of choice, Mark Randazza. The court had good reason to deny Attorney Randazza's Pro Hac Vice application. As the court explained, the applicant, Attorney Mark Randazza, is currently on a disciplinary probation in the state of Nevada through April of 2020 for serious misconduct. He has been suspended from the practice of law in the state of Nevada for a period of one year with conditions, and the suspension has been stayed for 18 months. The state of Arizona entered reciprocal disciplinary orders.

0:40:11 Thomas: Nice.

0:40:12 Andrew: Yep, and they're totally entitled to that. That is within the discretion of the court. The defendants do not now and have never refuted the factual foundation for the court's decision. That is, they make no claim of error whatsoever. So ever. This discretionary ruling warrants no further discussion. And then there's a citation to, yeah, courts can say you don't get to come in if you've been disciplined in your home state. The defendants also argue that attorney Pattis was fired months before trial. And then, you know, Mr. Jones was compelled to go to trial without his counsel of choice. They omit that attorney Pattis withdrew his motion to withdraw his counsel. Furthermore, Free speech systems and Alex Jones took significant steps in the free speech systems bankruptcy to ensure that Attorney Pettis would represent both of them in this trial.

0:40:12 Thomas: Oh

0:40:59 Andrew: And that's true. Remember, I told you that in order to get money in or out of a bankrupt estate, and we even covered this on a main sequence episode of Opening Arguments, you have to move the bankruptcy court for specific relief from the automatic stay. And this is how we know that Norm Pattis was paid $100,000 a month because they went to the court and said, hey, we want Norm Pattis to represent us. And so we got to pay him out of this bankrupt estate. So release $200,000.

0:41:19 Thomas: Yeah. Gosh, Norm, you made so much money. You could have been, you could have Been a King. Yeah I said it before. He could have just come out after all this and been like, ha got him. I was just pretending to be a bad lawyer and I cashed a check for a hundred thousand dollars a month in order to cost Alex Jones a bazillion dollars. You're welcome.

0:41:48 Andrew: He could have been.

0:41:50 Thomas: Give me a show on MSNBC or something. It would be a hero. Absolute hero.

0:41:51 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, he He would be at least twice the hero that Michael Avenatti was for that brief period of time. So, yeah, is just I wanted to highlight on that because it's just so egregious. And I've mentioned this so many times over the course of the show. Difference between when I talk here and say things sometimes or emotionally involve things, when you're arguing your case, you have nothing more precious to you and your client than your credibility. And when you lie, when, when you so shade the truth that the other side can come back and be like, right, but like you're omitting the fact that you withdrew your motion to withdraw as counsel, what do you think is going to happen? Right, the court's going to say this person is not trustworthy, and that's exactly what's happened in this case, and it's, it's just a really, really, I know we have a lot of young lawyers, a lot of law students, a

0:42:52 Thomas: A lot of people who've passed the bar with the help of opening arguments.

0:42:54 Andrew: Yeah, and I if you want to don't be like Norm, the best lesson I can give you is, you don't gild the lily pleadings in papers, right? If the law isn't a certain way, if you don't have a good faith basis for it, You know, if you're up against a steep climb, like, be honest with that. Can You you argue as zealously as you can? Sure. But, like. If there's three cases that go your way and 35 that go the other. Say. I'm urging the court to take a minority position. Here's why. Right?

0:43:25 Thomas: What's the downside of that? Is it that the judge then is just like labeling you as, oh, this person is a dishonest idiot. And then that affects not only that case, but like any other times you're appearing before that judge.

0:43:32 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know about longitudinally, right? Like judges are not supposed to hold what you argued in the previous case against you. But

0:43:43 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. OK, but but If I know really powerful old white men who are the majority of these judgeships, I know that they probably get one look at somebody and label them as dishonest and then hold that for the rest of their lives.

0:43:54 Andrew: It It's not something I would want to risk, know, in terms of my reputation. I would just add on top of it that, even in the context of the case itself, what you want is you want the judge, when the judge writes the opinion, to go to your brief to write the operative legal standard, right, to analyze X particular case. If And they no longer believe that what you're saying is valid, in then they're going to go to your opponent's brief right they're going to cut and paste the standard that applies the case that's applicable here from your opponents because they don't trust you anymore and that is just devastating so so uh devastating really bad uh not not a great week for uh Alex Jones and his lawyers but a great weak for us so there we go

0:44:25 Thomas: Hmm.

0:44:41 Thomas: There you go.

0:44:41 Andrew: No.

0:44:43 Clip: Oh, no associate of this firm has ever failed the bar exam. No kidding.

0:44:49 Thomas: And now it's time for T3BE at long last. It's been a while. I've got a little bit extended time off, maybe for Thanksgiving, but I'm back at it. Here we go. It is time to answer a question.

0:44:59 Andrew: Thomas, Cable Corp paid for an ad in the newspaper promising to include the FTO channel, I don't know, all insurrection all the time in its program lineup for subscribers who signed up within two weeks. A family signed up on the 12th day and received the FTO channel. On the 16th day, the FTO channel stopped showing up on the family's television. What are Cable Corp's rights? A. Cable Corp is entitled to time to restore the FTO channel.

0:45:08 Thomas: Yeah.

0:45:30 Thomas: Interesting.

0:45:31 Andrew: B. Cable Corp delivered on its promise and has no liability. C. The family is liable for damages for misuse of the FTO channel. Or D. The Family did not inform Cable Corp of the problem with the FTO channel.

0:45:35 Thomas: Huh.

0:45:46 Thomas: Okay. This is very weird because if I recall about 14 seconds ago, the question was, what are Cable Corp's rights? And then almost none of the answers, there's only one, A is the only answer that makes any sense just from a human perspective as an answer to that question. If I say, what are Cable Corp's rights? And you respond, the family did not inform Cable Corp of the problem with the FTO channel. That's not what I asked. I don't know if that'll matter, we'll see. All right, let's go through it. Cable Corp ran an ad saying sign up within two weeks and we'll include FTO channel. I wonder who wrote this, what they had in mind. There must be some, something they had mind with that acronym. I don't know. And so a family signed up 12th day to receive the FTO channel. And then on the 16th day, channel just goes away.

0:46:32 Thomas: Way, so I don't know if they're trying to get at like a real tricky thing of like that you'll have the channel for only two weeks, or I would read the original of advertisement being yeah, if you sign up within this two weeks, you'll get this channel, you permanently, or at least the time for being, uh, and then it asks so that they stop showing to the family, then ask what are Cable Corpse rights? Really weird question. A, Cable Corp is entitled to time to restore the FDO channel? Again, that's the only answer that in any way is a response to the human English of what are Cable Corp's rights. It's all downhill from here. B, Cable Corporation delivered on and its has no liability. Again, that's not an answer to the question, what are Cable Corp's rights, that that would be an answer. To the question of does CableCorp have liability or something like that, or if not, why or whatever.

0:47:18 Thomas: So that's weird. Delivered on its promise. Did it deliver on its promise? Don't know. It's also not an answer to what our cable corpse writes. So I'm not in love with B. I could see maybe winning on that technically correct, the best kind of correct by saying, Hey, we we did include the channel in your lineup for two days or whatever, four days. So technically maybe you could say, but, still a weird answer. And again, reminding you, the question is what are Cable Corp's rights? And C is the family is liable for damages for misuse of the FDO channel. Okay, sure. No, that's not an answer to anything and makes no sense. I'm firmly eliminating C. D, the family did not inform Cable Corps of the problem with the FTO channel.

0:48:03 Thomas: I have a stroke? Did you copy the wrong answers to the question. This doesn't, the only one that's even close to an answer is A. So, I mean, it's pretty hard to not go with A. And D is positing a fact that don't even know. It's just like adding, it is like Michael Scott improvisation, with where it is just like, D, the family has a gun. It is like, I do not know, that does not, could you say that, I guess it doesn't really, don't know how to evaluate that. I guess is what I'm saying. Cause it's not included in the question in any way. So I'm going to go with A, with the second best answer being, a, here's where I'm doing answer. A second best answer is let's burn this book in a fire. Cause if it's A, the second answer is let's burn this book in a fire and not use it anymore because this is the weirdest question I've ever seen in my life.

0:48:51 Thomas: The only answer that even comes close to answering what are Cable Corp's rights is question A, Cable Corp is entitled to time to restore the FTO channel. Makes sense to me. I don't know. They get some, probably have outages from time to time. Makes sense that they would get a amount of time to restore that or something. So, A.

0:49:07 Andrew: All right, well, if you want to play along with Thomas, uh, and especially if you want to guess something other than A, uh, you know how to do that. Just share this episode on what's left of social media, include the hashtag T3BE, include your guess, your reasons therefore, we we will will pick a winner and shower that winner with never-ending fame and fortune. Fame and fortune not guaranteed. It

0:49:25 Thomas: And someday maybe we'll figure out what mastodon is, but I just, I just don't feel like it. I'm sorry. I don't feel someday we'll get there.

0:49:31 Andrew: I've had the exactly same conversation like, like, 50 times about Mastodon. Like, someone will say, hey, you should get on Mastadon. It's just like Twitter. And I'll say, really? Because there are, like, a couple of accounts out there that have the Opening Arguments logo and the Opening Arguments name, and, like... I can't get them pulled down. And every time I try and ask about them getting pulled down, I'm told, like,... Whoa, would you pull down openingarguments@yahoo.com as an email address? And it's like... Okay, so it's not like Twitter, that's fine But Stop telling me it's like Twitter, right? If you love that, like, kind of decentralized, like, cool, great on you, but like, I, I just want a place where, like, journalists hang out and I can track stories and we can share the show with people who might make use of the show in a broader context. And the, like, you could go on a private Mastodon server and maybe Tell People

0:49:56 Thomas: Wow. It's even worse.

0:50:26 Thomas: Yeah, it's worthless to me, I don't know, yeah, there's a, I think there's also, like, a world server, maybe, and maybe that's where, yeah I don't know, I'm with, we're two boomers on this, I just don't care, as soon as it gets, if something latches on to where it's a commonplace and makes enough sense to use, maybe we'll be on true social, No, I'm just kidding, I don't know

0:50:28 Andrew: Is I don't Get it know, man I'm too Boomery Like Media Like the reason I'm on Twitter is because that's where I have found other media outlets with which to engage, right?

0:50:58 Clip: And thank you, Let's go!

0:51:00 Thomas: Um, and now it's time to thank our new patrons. A little bit of a switcheroo, I guess, we're thanking new patrons, and when we normally thank Hall of Famers, but the new schedule is the new scheduled, so let's do it. Uh, these are the people who have pledged to patreon.com/law and they are enjoying even more ad-free content in addition to all the other stuff. So why don't you start us off, Andrew.

0:51:18 Andrew: Big thank you to Ellis Valentiner, Daniel Steadman, DickWarner, Clyde, Brian Botti, Nathan Borgford-Parnell, Geoffrey Giles, Molly Stetzer, Steve Feinstein, shout-out to drugs and other illicit activities. Yeah, we will do that. Gabby Fribley, Steven Sutlief, Christopher Arbisi, Name, GalakFyarr, Dana Stubkjaer, Adrian Villarreal, Evan Ferree, Hunter O'Malley, Scott Wurzel, Alexander Jurenka, Jeffrey Johnson, Amicus Podrae. I love that. Littlest Hobo is Canadas great criminal repeat offender, kenneth Jackson, Cindy Byrne, Joel Martin, Kristin Gulling-Smith, Khorne Flakes, that's K-H-O-R-N-E, and I'm really hoping that's a Blood Bowl reference, so Sasquatch's Irish Wristwatches.

0:52:14 Andrew: Ed Ropple, Fuck Grass, Plant Clover for the Bees. Sure. Teresa, Ben Bayliss, Kaitlyn Japikse, Thomas, Harrison Hapner. The Federalist Society is giving us Decent Weirdos a bad name! Anthony Zerafa, Ron Lee, andrew morales, Micah Chatterton, Hoping for a New Heart Sooner Rather Than Later. Yeah, wow, wild, Wild Mat, Kriston Ahlefeld, Tuna Delight, cthulhuplush, love it, Zach Hoydich, Kevin Burns, and The Long Dicta of the Law, love that one, Thomas, your turn.

0:52:30 Thomas: Oh Boy All right, thank you to Rachel Whitcomb, Courtney Smith, Sebastien Appreciates Your Thoughtful Investigation, Anon00332233, Alexander, Aaron Halfaker, Aaron Kroeker, Erick Tryzelaar, Jeremy Mason, Josh Walkenhorst, Andrew Blais, or Blaze, or Blay, or something, sorry, John Saunders, Walter Haynes, Timothy Thayer, Janice Ness, Jacob Weiss, Steve, Steve Kapetanakis, I think, Erin Worrell. My mom did the groundwork to Trounce, and I've known he was trash since I was six.

Huh, I want to hear more about, could you tell us what that's about, send us an email or something, patron, patron message, better yet, Rebecca, Drew Turner, Celeste, undefeated breathing champ since 65, Boulder Redcoat, tebeve, Jason Kornfeld, Matthew Snoek, snow flurry, Jose E. Rivera, Willow Rae, Drea Harris, Anthony Gragg, meh, It's Brittany, beach!, Dave Tapley, Tom Weiss-Lehman, Daisy W., four eps a week, are you crazy, I'm, Catch, still trying to get to episode 150, so no spoilers please, I want to hear how this Trump thing ends. Yeah, Me too It's not over yet Yeah jan_iceberg, Fast Jet Fridays, Zebes Prime, or ZB's Prime, or something, Jacob Johnston, Emily Walz, Aaron Greller, Emma Joy Jampole, Deborah Clark, Jay Hensley, Emma's Previous Comcast Account, Laurie Eltzroth, and Shannon Keen, thank you so much.

Wow, lots of newbies, hope you you enjoy all the benefits and the perks. And that's our show. Well, Andrew, that was quite a long first extra episode, giving everybody their ad's worth. I don't know, their time's their worth, I hope. But that was really good, because I love hearing when Alex Jones has bad things happen to him and his lawyers as well, because what a sack of crap, one of the worst humans of all time. So we'll see you next time for our full show, that's coming right up tomorrow.

0:52:53 Andrew: Wow Yeah Spoiler He Did It Love you guys.

0:55:03 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.

0:55:37 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.