It is absurdly large and deliberately so. First of all this was a class action suit representing 22 plaintiffs. Secondly, the number was large to punish the defendant for continuously disrespecting the count with bad repeated behavior. Third, there was no defense because the defendant failed to work with the court resulting in a summary judgment.
>deliberately so
I’m not entertained that the court is playing an unrealistic and hyberbolic game.
I know, I’m a weirdo that wants to see realism and pragmatism in the court systems even if the defendant is a real asshole.
This is a pragmatic result. The defendant had every opportunity to raise a valid defense. Instead they ignored the court and were a continual harassing ass to the plaintiffs. One way to punish bad behavior is to increase the level of punishment proportional to the harm inflicted.
This punishment reflects not just the conduct at question by the law suit, but also the conduct during the law suit.
> I’m not entertained that the court is playing an unrealistic and hyberbolic game.
They did not. Jones was given years and dozens of opportunities to comply. He defaulted in 2 cases because he failed to comply in both cases. He was also defaulted after being warned he'd be defaulted. The cases literally started in 2018 and resolved in 2022. The reason they dragged out for so long is primarily due to Jones not complying with court orders. Constantly having to retake depositions where the same incomplete and non-compliant answers were given.
And he appealed (and lost) the appeal for the default.
Multiple judges saw his default and concluded "This was a reasonable way to handle an unreasonable litigant".
His lawyers were terrible. Nobody arguing otherwise on that point. Jones wasn't personally directing the legal strategy, he was doing the same thing you'd do.
> Jones wasn't personally directing the legal strategy, he was doing the same thing you'd do.
Yes he was. Jones didn't have 1 set of lawyers from start to finish on the cases. He went through about 20 different lawyers in both cases.
That doesn't happen if a client isn't personally directing the lawyers.
His strategy was very clearly to bring in new lawyers at each depo that didn't comply with the court order. When challenged, the lawyers would say "Oh, sorry, it's my first day on this case. We'll be sure to bring it next time".
He did the same thing with the corporate representatives. He had at least 3 different people show up as the corporate representative that were supposed to bring the finances. None of them complied.
His lawyers were objectively bad. You'd bring in a new team and fire them also.
Example: they sent a copy of his cell phone to the prosecuting attorney on accident and didn't request it back in time, so 2 years of his text messages were used against him.
What do you feel would be an outcome to this situation that aligns to the realism and pragmatism you believe the court system should have?
All of the threads related to this topic have had a pile of folks going "the amount was too much!" but hardly any of them say what they think an appropriate punishment would look like...
The "punishment" keeps appearing in this thread and I think that is what explains the eye popping settlement.