Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I didn't say I like what Steyn and co said or that they should be allowed to say it, but the process matters.

In the US we're supposed to have a very high threshold for what kinds of speech can be punished. For defamation, it is required that the plaintiff be able to show that there were damages.

The jury's awarding of $1 shows that they were not persuaded that there was any financial damage done to Mann by this think tank's actions. Their subsequent award of $1m in punitive damages shows that they were persuaded that Steyn's speech deserved to be punished.

That second part is what I'm not comfortable with. If they awarded him $1m in compensatory damages that would be one thing, but choosing the absolute minimum and then levying a huge punitive fine is a scary result for anyone who values the speech protections we have in the US.

You can look at it like this... They jury was concerned about the speech by the think tank. They don't want anyone else to have to suffer through it. The plaintiff though didn't have actual monetary damages from it, but you and me might have.

The jury is signaling, stronly, that this type of speech isn't allowed and should be punished. The fact that it happened to someone who wasn't monetarily harmed much by it isn't relevant but let's put a high bar out there to deter anyone else from this type of speech towards people who could be damaged.

The way the laws work it is really the only thing they could do if they believed the defendant's speech is harmful.

That's how I read into the monetary awards...

I know that's what the jury thought they were doing, but that isn't actually constitutional in the US. Juries are not empowered to decide whether speech isn't allowed and should be punished, they're empowered to decide whether speech is defamation and how much harm was done by said defamation.

Here, they found there was ~no harm done. That means that, constitutionally, they are unable to levy a substantial fine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com