The jury in the Texas case awarded the family around $50M, and the $965M in this case is a bit over 2x that, at $120M per family. So it's definitely a lot higher and I'm curious to see if there's anything that caused that.
More importantly, though, is that the Texas damages were split into ~$4.5M as compensatory damages (this is the part where you make amends for the harm you've caused), and the remaining ~$45M as punitive damages (the part where you). Texas has a cap on how much you can _actually_ be forced to pay in punitive damages, and it is specifically forbidden to instruct juries on the existence of this cap, so as to avoid tempting the jury to tack their actual punitive damages onto the compensatory damages number.
The amount in this case will almost certainly going to have a similar-ish split, and Connecticut is likely to have similar-ish laws in place. I'm not sure how this all works, but there's also the interesting detail that, if this was just one judgment, the punitive damages cap might apply to the aggregate amount rather than per plaintiff (So: if there is a $1M cap, does that mean he pays no more than $1M, so each family gets $125k, or each family can't get more than $1M, and he pays $8M).
No. In the Texas case, Jones lawyers successfully convinced the jury to award relatively low compensatory damages and to hammer him, if that's what they wanted, in the punitive damages phase. In Connecticut, Jones lawyers failed catastrophically to accomplish the same thing. The entire $965MM in this case is compensatory; we haven't reached punitive damages yet. Notably, the torts involved in this case don't appear to have capped damages in Connecticut.
(I have no particular reason to believe this verdict will stand unchanged, but whatever happens to knock the damages down, it will be something very different than what happens in Texas, where state and federal law caps punitive damages in relation to the underlying compensatory damages).
The other obvious difference between this case and Texas is that there are many more plaintiffs here.
> Connecticut is likely to have similar-ish laws in place
NAL, but according to the New York Times, this doesn’t appear to be the case.
> This case presented the greatest financial risk to Mr. Jones, because he was found liable of violating Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act, by using lies about the shooting to sell products on Infowars. There is no cap on punitive damages under that law.
More importantly, though, is that the Texas damages were split into ~$4.5M as compensatory damages (this is the part where you make amends for the harm you've caused), and the remaining ~$45M as punitive damages (the part where you). Texas has a cap on how much you can _actually_ be forced to pay in punitive damages, and it is specifically forbidden to instruct juries on the existence of this cap, so as to avoid tempting the jury to tack their actual punitive damages onto the compensatory damages number.
The amount in this case will almost certainly going to have a similar-ish split, and Connecticut is likely to have similar-ish laws in place. I'm not sure how this all works, but there's also the interesting detail that, if this was just one judgment, the punitive damages cap might apply to the aggregate amount rather than per plaintiff (So: if there is a $1M cap, does that mean he pays no more than $1M, so each family gets $125k, or each family can't get more than $1M, and he pays $8M).