the fact that Jones has already been adjudicated liable for defamation (and egregiously so, at that)
The default judgments on liability rendered in Texas and Connecticut resulted from Jones's willfully disobeying court orders, so any egregiousness regarding a finding of liability is entirely his own doing.
Jones' willful disobedience of court orders may justify the making of a default judgement against him, but it doesn't justify the egregious degree of the damages awarded after that default judgement was rendered (especially if they end up including Jones' social media accounts - see below). And in any case, whatever the degree of damages (whether egregious or not), they are supposed to represent liability incurred for defamation, not liability incurred for disobeying the court (which liability was already accounted for in the making of the default adverse judgement). So, no - any egregiousness of the awarded damages is
not warranted by Jones' disobedience, the proper remedy for which, depending on the kind and manner of disobedience, is something along the lines of "contempt of court" or, in the limit, adverse judgement by default (which is what happened in this case).
The plaintiffs have every right to attempt to recover damages from Jones, and given that judgments for willful and malicious conduct aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy they will have the right to do so even after his bankruptcy proceedings are concluded.
If they are so concerned about recovering damages from Jones, then why are they trying to deprive Jones of his ability to
"promote new business ventures"? It makes absolutely no sense to seek to recover damages by imposing conditions that are explicitly specified to be for the purpose of delimiting Jones' ability to exercise a means of earning the resources required to be able to pay those damages. Pray tell, how does deliberately impairing Jones' ability to
"promote new business ventures" redound to the benefit of the plaintiffs or of their chances of recovering damages?
And of what possible value are Jones' social media accounts, anyway, if they are no longer owned or controlled by Jones? I wouldn't be surprised if just the mundane and routine legal costs involved in depriving Jones of ownership and transferring it to someone else are more than the accounts are even worth without Jones behind them. Such a process appears to be aimed, not at compensating the plaintiffs for damages, but at applying a surreptitious kind of "prior restraint" by impeding or preventing the defendant's ability to publish anything at all (including things having nothing at all to do with the original defamation). It's like suing an old-fashioned newspaper for defamation, and then, after winning the suit, demanding that ownership of the newspaper be granted to the plaintiffs (or the state) in order to "deplatform" the publisher. But at least in the case of an old-fashioned newspaper, the physical plant of the newspaper would at least continue to be worth something significant even if ownership was seized and transferred. That is not the case for Jones' social media accounts, the seizure of which seems to be motivated by the desire to punitively silence him, and little or nothing more (it certainly won't serve to help make the plaintiffs whole in any significant way).
And what is to happen if, after seizing Jones' social media accounts, Jones simply creates new ones (which will, of course, end up being more valuable than the seized ones, by virtue of the fact that they will be Jones')? Are such new accounts then to be seized as well, under the same justifications? If not, then what is the point of having seized his previous accounts (which would now be of little if any value)? If so (which seems must be the case, if the justifications for the previous seizures are to be accepted), then how would that not dovetail perfectly with the claim that
"[t]hey won't stop until Jones' 1st Amendment rights are taken away" (
your reply to which is still a
non sequitur), whether one actually believes that claim or not? Jones being held liable for defamation does not in any way obviate (and is not mutually exclusive of) a deliberate attempt to exploit that holding of liability as a means of squelching Jones (especially given the feds' self-admitted proclivity for
"nudging" things in the direction they desire).
