Americans with no reputations get paid tens of millions for harm to those non-existent reputations

by philg

“Trump slammed with $83M verdict for repeatedly defaming advice columnist E. Jean Carroll” (New York Post):

The jury verdict was broken down into $65 million meant to punish Trump, $11 million to help Carroll rebuild her reputation and another $7.3 million to compensate her for her pain and suffering.

The plaintiff won $5 million in a previous lawsuit against the hated Trump. She’s 80 years old, 13 years beyond Social Security full retirement age. Has she lost out on job opportunities because Trump said that she was a liar? I hadn’t ever heard of her until she put herself into the public eye as a New York department store rape victim (the first jury actually did conclude that she was lying about having been raped).

A somewhat similar case… “Rudy Giuliani must pay $148 million to 2 Georgia election workers he defamed, jury decides” (CBS):

Two election workers had reputations worth more $33 million., apparently, because they could lose $33 million in actual damages to those reputations. And then they suffered more emotional distress than if they’d been run over by a car and paralyzed or if they’d actually been killed.

Americans who had no public reputation will now be some of the richest people on Planet Earth due to compensation for damage to those non-existent reputations. This is a shocking resource allocation result in what is a mostly planned economy!

11 thoughts on “Americans with no reputations get paid tens of millions for harm to those non-existent reputations”

  1. “Dr” Phil:
    Why did the “planned economy” give you tens of millions of dollars? Who did that planning? And why you? How do I get to know the planners?

    As I’ve often said, your grievances are the result of being a member of the idle rich. This country has given you opportunities for a life of so much opulence, but you sure have a lot to whine about. Woe is you — suffering in this planned economy.

    I read this article and thought of you. This guy has a $150k government pension, owns a $750k house, and thinks the country needs to be blown up. No real reason why other than having the right-wing brain-worm disease.
    https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/22/new-hampshire-primary-voter-00136850

    • Why did our planned economy reward those who started Internet companies in the 1990s, as I did? Because they wanted people to invest in Internet tech! I rationally responded by dropping what I was doing at the time (annoying people at MIT by talking about the World Wide Web all the time) and moving to NYC to work 80-hour weeks at Hearst Corporation setting up their infrastructure and then returned to Maskachusetts for more 80-hour weeks packaging up the software that I built for Hearst and some other consulting clients. I also took my meager graduate student savings and used it for capital investments, such as servers that could be sliced up and rented to customers. After about 8 years of demonic desk/software work, I decided that it was time to do some different stuff.

      How can you get in on this? Start an LLM or AI company! Or, if you only want millions of dollars and will take the rest as compound investment returns because you didn’t change your lifestyle, go to work at OpenAI or Microsoft as a programmer.

      One tip for wealth preservation that I learned the hard way… don’t get married! Or at least don’t get married and live in Massachusetts, California, New York, or some other state that considers identifying as “female” a disabling condition as far as employment is concerned! (I guess it would work for a “male” to marry someone who also identifies as “male” and earns a vastly higher income.)

    • @Mike, yes, this country has given us a lot (you, me and everyone else who is living on this land). Yes, planned economy existed very much since the foundation of this country. So what changed? The endless freebies-giveaways that just keep on giving and giving with no strings attached and with no time limit.

      A planned economy is to give people in need a lift — to rebound the economy so the engines hums again. Today’s planned economy is not taking mankind back to the moon or inventing the next internet. Today’s planned economy is a money printing machine to keep democrats in the office.

      A famous democrat once said: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” Sadly, today’s democrats message is: “Ask not what you can do for your country – ask what your country can do for you.”

      Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go back and watch American football on my 10 year old 42 inch TV, while those on government assistance do the same but on their 85 inch 4K TV.

  3. Your characterization that: “(the first jury actually did conclude that she was lying about having been raped).” is wrong or at least grossly overstated. I believe in the trial there was some question as to the legal distinction between rape and sexual assault. Also, if the jury actually did conclude she was lying about being raped, why would they extend any her any credibility as to the concurrent sexual assault claim to which they unanimously agreed?

    Pretty bold of you to jump to the defense of someone who bragged about sexually assaulting women on audio tape. Plus the numerous women who presumably gave compelling testimony that similar was done to them. Trump also had a real credibility issue since he publicly claimed she wasn’t his type and that he’d never met her, except when shown a photo with he and Carroll he mistook her for his ex-wife.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/07/donald-trump-rape-language-e-jean-carroll

    In true cult-of-job-creator fashion, you seem to suggest that the only way to calculate legitimate harm done to people is as a function of their income. Commoners can have no claim and must accept whatever deeds the benevolent job creators deem acceptable! Carroll can no longer earn since she’s able to collect social security? I think she’s writing books now. Perhaps the half of women who have experienced sexual assault, and the 25% of women who have experienced rape, or attempted rape, are interested in reading about her experience besting the former most powerful man in the world?

    As for Giuliani, the guy completely fabricated a very specific right wing fairy tale of coordinated voter fraud accusations and broadcast it repeatability to the entire country. He knew full well what he was doing, and it was no accident unlike your car crash comparisons. He unleashed the rabid MAGA army on those two women. If someone had intentionally driven a car intending to hit someone being paralyzed, in addition to being subject to civil monetary damages and certainly criminal prosecution with significant prison time.

    Giuliani and Trump are both full of BS and I guess juries don’t like that even though MAGA eats it up and roughly 50% of voters are willing to give a pass. Have you seen the claims Giuliani made, false police report, etc., against the supermarket employee who vigorously slapped him on the back? America’s mayor and vaunted mob prosecutor didn’t count on there being security camera footage of the encounter. Talk about abuse of privilege.

    Your bottom line seems to be that one’s only value to society is present income, otherwise you’re ripe to be used and abused by those of means. Karma must be real. Trump and his companies have been involved in some 4,000 lawsuits, including ridiculous defamation claims. I guess the job creators prefer the legal system when the other side can’t mount a vigorous fight.

    I don’t recall you ever mentioning any legal injustices resulting in people being wrongly convicted and incarcerated, or railroaded into pleas. Probably those folks don’t produce enough to matter anyway. If the legal system works well enough to sentence people to death, I say it works well enough to hand down multi million dollar defamation verdicts!

  4. The first Carroll defamation case was strange in that the alleged rape/sexual assault had occurred so long ago. On the other hand there was testimony corroborating the plaintiff’s claims, the presiding judge is experienced and well respected and has a very solid background, though he is getting on in years. He heard all of the evidence, unlike the various people commenting here, and affirmed that the judgment and the damages were supported by the evidence and specifically found that Trump had raped the plaintiff “according to the common meaning of the word.” Trump was represented by competent counsel though he himself if I recall correctly didn’t bother to show up & engaged in all sorts of theatrics outside of the courtroom. Trump’s counsel subsequently resigned under circumstances suggesting either that he did not buy Trump’s deposition testimony denying the rape or that he was uncomfortable with Trump’s out of court disrespect of the court. If Trump thinks he was treated unfairly under the law he can or is appealing, I haven’t followed it, and if an appeals court agrees with him the verdict will be overturned — though it is difficult to overturn a jury verdict and the findings of the trial judge who heard all of the evidence. . As for the second case, Trump seems to have been represented by a lawyer chosen not for her legal abilities but for her willingness to engage in theater inside and outside the courtroom. From the little that I read, she seemed to lack basic trial skills such as how to impeach a witness with a deposition transcript. The actual damages, as Phil points out, seem excessive and the punitive damages seem disproportionate as well. The judge will likely reduce the damages but given Trump’s disrespect of the court by not showing up for the first trial and engaging in out of court theatrics in both trials I would suspect that the judge will not go out of his way to help Trump.

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