A post was merged into an existing topic: RangerLoops troll posts
Or some number from 0 to 5 or so? I don’t know how you can know that they were guaranteed 2 championships with Shaq (Phil only misses one season, did he not?). But I’m failing to see how winning 5 rings is bad for the game. He seems to be one of the most successful players ever.
$28 million settlement from LA County just for the sharing of photos by firefighters and law enforcement among their own friends & family as “gossip”, pictures that never got online and have never been seen by the victims’ families.
How on earth is this proportionate to the harm?
That 28.5 million includes 15 million that resulted from her winning in court and successfully (and reasonably) claiming emotional harm. It is not intended to be proportional, it is intended to be extremely punitive to prevent LA County from letting its employees act like dicks in the future while going about their official duties. I’d rather see more punitive verdicts like this to be honest.
The rest is a comprehensive settlement to keep from being sued further. His widow won 15 million. But as they came of age each of Kobe’s three daughters could have sued separately and likely won as well. 13.5 million for a comprehensive settlement is cheaper than 45 million if each daughter got another 15 mil a piece.
But the issue of proportionality is still relevant. If this is the appropriate punitive award for just sharing gruesome accident photos with friends (not online), I would think the appropriate punitive award for a group of cops beating someone to death should be a billion dollars.
Yes, but a part of the “proportionate equation” is the court of public opinion. The event was traumatic and shocking, and the wave of public sentiment and support was for the Bryant family. L.A. County wanted to make the whole thing go away for a number of reasons and, as mentioned, the settlement may have actually favored them considering what could have happened in the long run.
That’s not an argument that it’s proportionate. That’s an argument that it’s disproportionate just because the victim was famous. If anything, we should be discouraging misbehavior by those in authority toward people who are unlikely to be missed more than misbehavior toward rich and famous people.
Keep in mind that it is their fame that fueled the exploitation of their family tragedy. If people want to make big money exploiting their fame, then I see it as fair that they compensate them in a like manner.
The pictures were not sold to anyone.
That’s irrelevant. We should be discouraging bad behavior according to the amount of harm it does, not according to whether famous people are involved.
Yet. They hadn’t been sold, yet. Forgive me for not having very much confidence in human integrity.
I don’t consider it “irrelevant” whatsoever. Fame and riches make people high profile targets for more things that I can possibly list. There’s a multitude of neer’do’wells out there conniving and scheming ways to take advantage of them.
So you think homeless people are less likely to be victims and less worthy of protection from bad behavior by cops than rich and famous people?
They are less likely to be victims of crimes that can pay off in big money. That was the discussion, high compensation for misdeeds that can garner a high payoff. I agree with it and you don’t. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that because neither one of us is going to convince the other.
Not a single word of this discussion has involved anyone or anything other than the Bryant lawsuit and the compensation given. The above accusation was something you manufactured in your own head and then accused me of believing it. It is a classic example of a “Strawman Argument”, and I resent it and, quite frankly, I’m disappointed in you for employing it.
Straw man Argument - "A straw man fallacy is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false one. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be “attacking a straw man”.
This discussion is ended.
Pretty much the entire discussion is comparative.
The post you first replied to:
For the purpose of damages in a civil case, most certainly.
Let’s say you defame two people. One is a CEO and the other is a homeless person. The defamation is willful, awful, and easy to prove. You are sued by both parties.
The CEO who lost his job and reputation, and might never recover in his career, can easily show damages, perhaps millions of dollars.
The homeless person would struggle to do so, as he had no official income to begin with and was and continues to be unknown. He’d most likely receive some kind of minimal judgement.
That’s how the law works in many cases.
Think of the difference between breaking a knickknack that costs $5 from a department store, or a priceless vase in a museum. Even though the actions are the same, the damages are dramatically different.
Of course, when what’s at stake is economic harm.
But that’s not the basis of the claim here. The basis is the traumatic impact of the photos on the families of the victims. (Of in fact, some hypothetical possible future impact - they have never seen them.) I don’t see why the fact that the family is wealthy and famous is remotely relevant to this; nor why giving them a vast amount of money at the taxpayer’s expense is an appropriate remedy.
Would the cops have taken gruesome crash pictures of some non-famous person and shared them with their buddies and random other people at a bar and at a gala event?
Mrs. Bryant and her co-plaintiff argued that the photos were taken and shared precisely BECAUSE it was Kobe, because it was a famous person, because this was a celebrity story. She argues that she lives in continuing emotional distress because she’s afraid that she’ll turn on the computer one day and find the pictures on social media. She presented an expert witness who testified that there is a long-standing practice in southern California of first responders keeping “ghoul books”, graphic photographs of dead celebrities kept for amusement and as souvenirs.
The settlement is not strictly for economic losses, but also intended to be punitive, to get the department to enforce prohibitions on keeping celebrity ghoul books. The fact that the family is wealthy and famous is highly relevant, because the argument is that if the people involved were non-famous and non-wealthy, the photographs would not have been passed back and forth in the first place. The department taking a major hit (over $50 million now with the various settlements, legal fees, etc.) is an incentive for the department to take the matter seriously.
It is not for economic losses at all. And the fact that it is punitive doesn’t change anything. Punitive losses should obviously be designed to deter harmful behavior to the extent that it is harmful.
I realize that the fact that they are famous is relevant to the probability that they might eventually see the pictures online. I was not comparing gruesome pictures of famous people in accidents to gruesome pictures of unknown people in accidents.
I’m comparing whether $28 million to deter the act of sharing careless “gossip pictures” of an accident that could at worst cause emotional trauma is proportionate to settlements for deliberate violence and murder.
George Floyd’s family got a settlement of $27 million, and I think that was a record.
I’m sure it happens ALL THE TIME, and you just don’t hear about it, because no one cares, because they aren’t famous.
Considering that cops take gruesome pictures to share of a guy they just personally beat to death… yeah, they would.
I’m with @Riemann here, lots of money (from the taxpaying public) going to people who already have lots of money for emotional harm that poor people couldn’t even begin to sniff a settlement for. It’s a joke, an embarassment.
I doubt it, because cops and firefighters have all seen gruesome scenes of mayhem, be it at a crime scene or a bad car accident. What makes this scene different and special and worthy of note was that the victim was famous. They weren’t just showing pictures to their closest buddies; they showed the photos to a bartender because “this was Kobe.”
Was there evidence that the Minneapolis police routinely murdered people, such that they need to be deterred from thinking that is acceptable behavior? The cops in the George Floyd case were fired the day after the murder; the people in this case faced no disciplinary action.