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Jury Orders Gawker To Pay $115 Million To Hulk Hogan In Sex Tape Lawsuit (zerohedge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: [Hogan's attorneys told jurors this is the core of the case:] "Gawker took a secretly recorded sex tape and put it on the Internet." And now they are paying for it, dearly. Also notable is that there doesn't seem to be anyone interested in defending them, as even the Twitter community (if it can truly be called that) has come out strongly in favor of the ruling against Gawker. Maybe they should have at least made more friends? They did make $6.5 million in net income in 2014 and their Wikipedia article states that they were last sold in 2009 for $300 million, so while they may not be put out of business, it seems likely they will at least be [changing] hands, and soon, with the jury ruling $55 million for economic injuries and $60 million for emotional distress. I think that's jury-speak for "body slam."
According to Ars Technica, Gawker Media was one of the first successful, large, digital-only news companies. "The stunning sum, which may have punitive damages added to it, is a life-threatening event for the New York-based network of news and gossip sites."
According to Ars Technica, Gawker Media was one of the first successful, large, digital-only news companies. "The stunning sum, which may have punitive damages added to it, is a life-threatening event for the New York-based network of news and gossip sites."
NT
Who he?
"life-threatening event"
Gawker is a corporation, not an actual living entity.
"life-threatening event"
Gawker is a corporation, not an actual living entity.
Not according to the Supreme Court.
Yes it is a large amount. This is damages. Remember HH probably makes 5-15 million a year over 10 years. They basically set out to rob him of his job and basically said they did not care. Yes he is a douchlog but that does not excuse what they did.
It's time gawker got kicked in the balls for their shitty reporting practices. My only regret is that the hulkster is not allowed to use the piile-driver on the CEO in the court room following the verdict.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
This is true. In the US (and many other countries), a corporation is a legal person that gets to capitalise the profits but socialise the losses. In particular, at death, most of that company's creditors are fucked, even if its owners are filthy rich.
Imagine a properly capitalist world where owners of a company are actually responsible for it, and would owe its debts. That is not a world that we have.
It feels very strange to me that someone could be set for life, catapaulted to wealth far beyond what most individuals might accrue, based on a legal judgement like this.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Gawker is garbage.
They lead the charge telling the most astonishing lies about gamers - and getting away with it. They only people crying over this are Gawker's owners and the insane far left SF hordes who used it in their ideological crusade.
May they rot in hell.
The problem is that the "owners" are often shareholders. Why should creditors have the right to completely plunder a persons savings, just because he put a few hundred bucks into a stocks?
. . . when your own unethical journalism catches up with you?
It's hard to decide who to root for here....one dirtbag filing suit against another.
He didn't make it, you stupid motherfucker.
It was taken of him without him knowing, then sold.
How fucking stupid are you?
It was recorded without his or the woman's consent. The woman and her husband had an open marriage, the man encouraged them to have sex and recorded it secretly. He then sold it to make money.
Hard to take sides here. Really hard.
Can I vote for "Maybe they realize that for a fraction of the money the could hire someone to 'eliminate' the problem"?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Don't make it in the first place.
Hogan didn't know that he was making a sex tape. The footage is from the vantage of a smoke-alarm-camera. The other person in the sex tape was the wife of his best friend. His best friend was one to suggest that Hogan and his wife have sex. Of the three of them, his friend was also the only one that knew about the recording, because he set it up, and then sold the resulting tape to Gawker.
Because it would keep stockholders from acting as the worst sort of absentee owner allowing their evil sociopathic corporate child to run roughshod over everything.
But we could be the first to actually see a corporation get a capital punishment.
That alone would make the whole trial worth while.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As I understand it, it was the husband of the woman he was banging who secretly recorded it.
So, er, want to try again?
So you are supporting the #Fappening? Or is it only wrong when it happen to women?
Everybody thinks they should be punished for publishing images of a naked Hulk Hogan.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
As a news editor myself, they deserve it. I had countless of stories ripped off by these guys, made to look like their investigations. I've seen stories in which they revealed data dumps from breaches, giving international attention to events that put the financial situation of millions of people at risk.
If the Hulkster hits the punitive jackpot, the total could be as high as $460M.
That's an utter death blow to Gawker.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
To appeal the defendant is required to purchase a $50m bond. This is at the discretion of the court. I suggest they be allowed to forego the bond in exchange for paying $10m irrevocably right now. In addition to the $115m judgement, there is still a hearing on punitive damages which might be as much as triple that again. It would be smart to cement the right to appeal.
JJ
If you are stupid enough to get recorded fucking
Do you even understand the concept of a secret recording? The point of a secret recording is that people caught by the recording device have no idea that they are being recorded, which makes it impossible for them to give consent to be recorded.
This is like saying that Erin Andrews' is at fault for herself being secretly recorded in her hotel room. Erin is the sports reporter that recently won a law suit against Marriott over secretly created nude footage. A hotel employee told her stalker what room she was staying in, then offering to put him in the adjacent room, whereupon he used a special drill bit to create an pinhole opening in the wall for a pinhole camera, and a hacksaw to alter the peephole in her door.
No. Gawker knew damned well that it wasn't news or at all in the public interest to post it without permission. They did it hoping to give themselves a big boost. Even the Enquirer knows better than that.
There is plenty of blame to go around, but it was Gawker that took the availability from a small circle of people to the whole damned internet.
(Yes, I know he didn't know he was being filmed). I'd never knowingly make a sex video. I make a lot of videos, but only of things I am actually good at.
I'll be here all week. You know, 'cause I have no place else to go.
Gawker is more an indictment of American culture. Yes, they do underhanded things and their reporting is abysmal at best, but they earn money because controversy and dirty rumors seem to captivate Americans. If Americans weren't so fascinated with scandal, controversy, and rumor, then Gawker wouldn't exist. Gawker exists because there is a large market for it.
Congress thinks otherwise...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No one expects the SUPREME COURT!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Then you're an idiot who has failed to grasp the legal issues here.
He didn't know he was being recorded. He didn't consent to being recorded. He didn't give permission to release the tape.
Gawker then used the celebrity of someone who had no idea the tape was being made to drive traffic to their website and make a profit.
I'm going to have to come down on the side of punishing douchebag journalism on this one.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
No, faggot.
So says the guy who took the video, under penalty of perjury, to the fbi.
Victim-blaming is the worst sort of lazy thinking. I'm not gonna sweep my room for bugs every night, and nobody should have to. Apologizing for illicit voyeurism is just creepy.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Have gnu, will travel.
With over $100 million on the line, I doubt that Hogan cares one iota, but I noticed Hogan sex tape trending their morning on a porn site.
So on the one hand, what Gawker did probably does deserve a punishment, and since this is probably just 1 incident of hundreds or thousands, their is something to the idea of the punishment being significant because most of the time they will get away with it. But anyone suing over a sex tape leak, obviously does not care who and how many see there sex tape.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
"...and nothing of value was lost"
Why shouldn't shareholders be held responsible for the investments they chose to make? Normally if you profit from illegal activities, those funds are taken and you are held responsible. Why should dividends, splits, and increased share prices be any different?
It is only different now because those who make the laws are are heavily invested in or bankrolled by businesses that flaunt the laws.
Setting aside the whole professional damages area, what is fair for personal damages? Does a poor person get less because money is worth more to them? $10,000 is a shit load of money to me, that is the number that popped into my head as fair for breach of privacy and emotional distress. But to someone worth millions, who goes to $10,000 a plate dinners, obviously emotional distress is worth more to them. They might pay millions to avoid the leaking of a sex tape, while someone who makes $20K a year obviously would not. So are the emotions of rich people actually worth more than the emotions of poor people? What would be a fair way to put that into law?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
No need to mod it down, 'cuck' or any variation of it are better than -1, Flamebait.
Can I recommend you actually read up on what you're bitching about before speaking? From my understanding this "immoral sex act" involved a husband and wife and a third person who was single. Yes, he fucked some guys wife. From what I understand, the guy who's wife he was fucking was fully aware of it happening and was okay with it. He apparently also secretly recorded it to make money. So, is the behaviors of a group of informed and consenting adults now immoral to you? Do you feel that you should get to say what people are and are not allowed to do? If you do, then congrats, you're a fascist, please go out back and shoot yourself in the head immediately for the betterment of society.
I think these amounts awarded to Hogan and Erin Andrews (TV reporter secretly video recorded nude in her hotel room) are excessive when people who are wrongfully convicted of crimes they didn't commit get fractions of that amount after serving many years in prison.
This guy (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18715007/) wrongfully convicted of a rape he didn't commit was imprisoned for 18 years and only got $5 million.
And Hogan gets $115 million and Andrews got $55 million? If you use the $5 million figure for false imprisonment, Hogan would have to have been imprisoned for 415 years to justify that amount, Andrews 198 years.
Don't get me wrong, both Hogan and Andrews were wronged, but to what extent were their lives ruined the same way being convicted of rape and losing decades of your life to a prison sentence? Hogan's career as anything but somebody famous for being famous is basically over anyway, and I seriously doubt any of his celebrity has been damaged by viewing him having sex.
Andrews cried crocodile tears on the stand, but how believable is that considering she apparently has no problem continuing to be on TV (new contract, even!)? She's only on TV because of her sex appeal to male sports fans and her entire career since high school has been based around being basically an eye candy accessory (being a cheerleader in high school and college). If anything, her complaint boils down to overexposure, and whatever loss of her allure occurs because now we've seen her naked. She wasn't even caught do anything of the embarrassing "fappening" poses, either, just walking around her hotel room.
I think $5 million probably isn't enough for someone who was jailed for 18 years, although you can probably make some kind of lost earnings argument that is at least grounded in reality. Hogan and Andrews? I can't even begin to see the justification.
The issue becomes one of means and intent. If I buy stocks in a company through, I get little in the way of say in the company's actions, and I certainly cannot be accused of being part of a conspiracy if the company poisons a bunch of people or does something else nefarious. This would be like demanding all taxpayers be imprisoned because the government did something awful.
As to corporate personhood, while perhaps it is interpreted too far judicially, the original notion was simply that a corporation could hold assets, equity and liabilities as an independent entity. While one could, I suppose, grant all shareholders pieces of the balance sheet based on the proportion of their ownership, it would be a very complicated system. Corporate personhood is meant as a short hand. Corporate personhood is just that, a legal shorthand or fiction that allows transfers of ownership and paying of dividends, and ultimately raising and transferring of capital a lot easier.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Those who defend Gawker on free speech grounds, curiously many of which would deny those rights based on fightng racism and sexism and all the other -isms out there, should take a step back and chew on this for a while. If Gawker's free speech argument had prevailed, they would have also undone "revenge porn" laws, which largely affect women, and you'd be hearing the most disgusting, vile, and sexist justifications in the name of "public good."
Gawker didn't need to publish the video and profit from an illegal act to report on it.
And that is the problem with the business system in the US. It needs to not shield owners from losses or from legal responsibilities. If you profit from it, you should be held financially and criminally liable.
You are assuming the average shareholder has some influence over the company. You are ridiculously mistaken.
While one could, I suppose, grant all shareholders pieces of the balance sheet based on the proportion of their ownership, it would be a very complicated system.
Isn't there such a thing as voting and non-voting stock?
I'd think that one solution would be that the entirety of the value of the voting stock could be considered corporate assets, to be distributed to creditors if the corporation is dissolved. That way the people who actually had the power to make things right but didn't can't simply run off with big sacks of money. Basically, if you want the power to make big money decisions, you must invest your own financial future in the corporation by purchasing risky voting stocks instead of the safer, non-voting stocks.
I know, it's likely oversimplified and idealistic...but wouldn't it be nice?
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
The stock is a share in the corporation, so if the corporation has no net assets and is dissolving, then the stock is worthless.
Said another way, the stockholders get paid last (after creditors) when a corporation dissolves.
I won't miss these hypocritical pieces of shit.
I don't know what is worse: That they refused to take the sex tape of Terry down (Hulk Hogan) but at the same time condemned the leaked pictures of female celebrities during "The Fappening", or that they actually tried to invoke the Holocaust and "FREE SPEECH!" during the trial.
Kind of ironic since this is the same media company spewing "HATE SPEECH IS NOT FREE SPEECH" line.
http://nypost.com/2016/03/07/g...
Let them burn.
Gawker railed on and on and on about how the perpetrators behind the fappening should basically just be shot, but they did the exact same thing to Hogan and tried to defend themselves with the same things people said about the fappening crowd.
Good fucking riddance and I hope the managers and these specific writers get fired and are out of a job forever.
I think the GP meant that shareholders should push to have more influence, not that they have. As in, invest in a company, be ready to contribute to its debt - and if you're not ready for it, don't invest.
There's nothing like $HOME
They said in court that they wouldn't hold back from publishing this unless the subject was 4 years old.
As far as I'm concerned, their "reporting" is mere obscenity and indecent under any real community's standards, so all I have to say is that I can't think of anyone more deserving of punishment like this.
I am assuming that if that condition exists, they will demand indemnification from the major shareholders, demand that the corporations make appropriate agreements with anyone it has significant debt with, demand greater control, or not invest in corporations.
That's not to say there wouldn't be problems with complete liability, but there is some justification for more liability than exists now, especially in the case of criminal acts.
The stock is a share in the corporation, so if the corporation has no net assets and is dissolving, then the stock is worthless.
Said another way, the stockholders get paid last (after creditors) when a corporation dissolves.
Ah yes, that's right. A stock is only 'worth' as much as someone is willing to pay for it.
Okay then, new proposal: to hold voting stock, a person would need to maintain in escrow personal funds equivalent to the highest share price over the last 12 months. These funds would need to be held in a bond or something equally secure (i.e., they can't be 'held' in more of the corporation's shares) and would then be surrendered to creditors et al if the corporation went under. The value of the held funds may not match the current share value over time, but at least it's something, a personal commitment to the well-being of the company they want to help govern.
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Hi -
I have lived in the Los Angeles area for many years, and in the early years of its existence, defamer.com was just tremendous. It was hip, witty, and was based on all sorts of inside information on the real workings of Hollywood. Also, their live blogging of the Oscars used to be very entertaining.
And Valleywag was also pretty good in its time.
Of course, in recent years defamer has seemed to become more of a TMZ wannabe. But there was a time when I looked forward each day to reading it.
TWR
The shareholder does have an influence if his vote during the decision making process is one of the influencing factors leading towards a 51% lead.
They are responsible to the amounts invested. But they take absolutely no actions in the running of the company so why should they be responsible for more than that? It is not like they participated in anything.
And no - profiting from illegal activities does not directly translate to shareholders profits. You could liken those more to someone who robbed a bank going to McDonald's. McDonald's Will not lose the money it collected for that big Mac and soda even though it was purchased with the loot from the heist. Likewise, you won't have your paycheck confiscated because drug dealers purchase your software with drug money.
> Isn't there such a thing as voting and non-voting stock?
There are many types of corporations, including private and public. EFF and the Linux Foundation are both corporations. There are a lot of variations and I can not say, in any particular direction, which one it is that this is - I've never looked nor will I bother today. In short, most people don't have voting stock. Even those who do have voting stock, may not have much say - votes may also count for various amounts.
I'm not sure that I support imprisonment for voters who are entirely uninvolved but I have no problem with them (and this includes me - I am a *them*) losing their share's value, entirely, first - in order to pay creditors or fines - if the problem is egregious enough. You might want to ensure the voting is not anonymous so that you can say who did and did not vote for what.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Shit, if it's worth 115 million, I'm going to go stay down at the Merriot on 98A, I'll be back with a room number. You want me to get a hooker? There's a strip bar along the way. Hell, there's a gay bar along the way too. I am not scared. ;-)
That's humor, bad humor but humor. The big difference here is that I would /know/ about it (now that I've said it). Mr. Hogan was offered no such luxury.
Has anyone watched this video? I confess, I have not seen it - nor looked for it. It's probably out there. Anyhow, I'm a bit curious about what the chick looked like and how the Hulk guy was - specifically his antics. I know, I know... I can't help being curious. I know one of you will have watched it. Spill the beans, we won't make fun of you. I just can't bring myself to go watch it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
But you can be forced to pay back anything you received from a pyramid scheme
Well, not always but a pyramid scheme is already illegal. Owning stocks or shares in a company is not. In fact, the law creates a fiduciary duty to those running the company which preclude them from doing illegal activities. However, illegal activities is not the only way businesses fail.
Here is a problem with taking more than your investment if a company does something illegal or just fails through no actions of your own. Most people who are investing in corporations are investing through some managed funds or programs within their retirement. If they lose their retirement, your taxes will have to be raised to provide their retirement. So suppose your 401k which gives you very little choice in which companies it invests in has a companyin the portfolio that does something illegal and the shareholders are held responsible. So this one company fails and goes bankrupt which is defined as more debt than it can pay. Now not only is your 401k out the value of the shares it owned but the total loss through absolutely no actions of your own. Very rarely in any other aspect of life are you subject to fines or debt of others because of no actions you take other than a casual or ancillary relationship with someone else. There should be no difference here just because some people hate corporations and the people investing in them.
1) He didn't know he was being recorded. He didn't consent to being recorded. He didn't give permission to release the tape.
2) Gawker then used the celebrity of someone who had no idea the tape was being made to drive traffic to their website and make a profit.
3) Gawker then ignored a court order to take the content down.
"His name was James Damore."
I agree. I'm tolerant of free speech and agree you need to build a lot of slack into the legal system to protect it. I also agree what Gawker did was plain nasty and try as I might I can't find any excuse to justify it. Tell the world someone is a hypocrite sure but what was served by distributing the tape like that? They could have just described it and showed it if he disputed it. The amount the jury awarded is obscene yes but anything less and that and Gawker would have written it off as a business expense and laughed all the way to the bank. So as obscene as the amount is maybe it really is what is needed to "send a message" so severe no one ever dares try that again.
Now if only those sort of punishments were applied to other corporate lawbreakers? Like those fucking bankers.
What sucks is that if Gawker or some other rag did it to *you* dear reader then you would get hardly anything. Everyone should be protected against this. Not just celebrities like Hogan.
My understanding is that he said some extremely racist things in the video, but in these days of hyper-sensitivity.... who knows.
The thing is that he has a right to be a secret extreme racist. People are actually allowed to believe whatever they fuck they want to believe. I know, crazy stuff right there.
There are some that demand that beliefs be labeled acceptable or unacceptable, so that they can then assign differing levels of "justifiable treatment" to people based on their beliefs. This demand is more plainly the demand that their own beliefs be given special treatment, at the expense of all who believe otherwise.
Its fair to violate Hogan's rights because Hogan has unacceptable beliefs, right?
"His name was James Damore."
I see nothing indicating a sale of the company in 2009. They have no parent company. There is no 300 million. Denton liquidated his remaining holdings in Jan because he knew he was fucked.
9 seconds of his life
like our blog
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THANKS
That's a good way to insure the death of venture capital and IPOs. After all with the current legal environment a shareholder can't legally know what is going on inside the company when deciding what to do with their stock so no one would be foolish enough to take on the liability when they have no say in what happens inside the company (other than the occasional election of officers/board members) and no knowledge of what those people are doing outside of what is public knowledge.
The only way this idea works already exists and that's with a limited set of owners of a company that are involved in the running of said company. So they know what is going on in the company and can directly influence those actions. Shareholders are removed from that direct influence and inside knowledge.
I'm thinking you must have missed my other comments in this thread? I'm the guy, partially black even, who doesn't think that they had any right to publish this and that doing so was harmful and that they deserve to be hit hard enough, financially, to be required to close their doors.
I don't give a shit if he was the most horrible person on the planet. It's the most horrible people who need the protections and full force of law to ensure they are given their rights and liberties.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Don't make it in the first place.
Hogan didn't know that he was making a sex tape. The footage is from the vantage of a smoke-alarm-camera. The other person in the sex tape was the wife of his best friend. His best friend was one to suggest that Hogan and his wife have sex. Of the three of them, his friend was also the only one that knew about the recording, because he set it up, and then sold the resulting tape to Gawker.
Wow, and I thought I had some lowlife friends.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
People are actually allowed to believe whatever they fuck they want to believe.
If I believe that the world is flat and the sun is a big lightbulb just a couple of miles up in the sky, I can't really complain if someone reports that I believe the world is flat and the sun is a big lightbulb just a couple of miles up in the sky.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
He then sold it to make money.
Specifically, he sold it to Gawker.
If they had simply ran a story about the tape, they'd probably have come through the whole thing untouched. But they decided to actually publish parts of the tape, then refused to take it down even after being Ordered to do so by the Courts.
The best part of the whole thing is watching the tears flow over on Jezebel. Those SJW's in their Echo Chamber are currently going through a complete meltdown, it's so delicious that popcorn isn't even required.
Corporations are artificial legal constructs, and work under the principles we establish. There are reasons why allowing people to invest in stock is a good idea, but if I could be personally bankrupted if any company I had invested in collapsed or was found to have committed massive illegal actions, I wouldn't dare.
Limited liability corporations (as in, the most I can lose from buying stock is the money I put into it) are, I believe, necessary for the economy as we know it. I don't know how long in the future this will be true, but I don't really see any likely circumstances in which these will be more of a problem than a benefit.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
In an actual corporate bankruptcy, there's categories of creditors (vendors with unpaid bills, customers without product, employees not yet paid, etc.) which are legally lined up. All the corporate assets are sold off, and the resulting money is used to pay each category in line. The stockholders get nothing (well, theoretically, I think common stock owners are ahead of preferred stock owners, or something like that, but if there's money left when they get to the head of the line the company would not have gone bankrupt).
This means the shares are worth nothing after the bankruptcy. Stock other people own is not a corporate asset. If they paid the money to the corporation, then that money is an asset, and they're not getting it back.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Which is exactly what happens in real life right now. I've owned shares in a company or two that went bankrupt, and gotten absolutely nothing. All the money that I spent on the stock went to other people. If a company I own stock in does something massively illegal, nobody's going to come for me and put me in prison or take all my assets, which means I can afford to own stock without horrifying potential liability. On the other hand, I'm losing everything I invested.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Absolutely - however, I don't think that *currently* the voting members usually see jail time or even the inside of a court room. I could get behind that. Limited Liability should be about accidental indemnification and not used as a license to commit societal harms.
Yes, yes I just said that. ;-)
People think I'm some sort of crazed zealot about capitalism, small government, and refusing to allow the state to protect the people - all of the people. Oddly enough, that couldn't be further from the truth. Ah well... Sadly, I feel obligated to mention that at this moment. It's not for your sake, you know that. It's for the others who seem inclined to read my posts and then completely misinterpret them.
"No, I don't favor the color yellow."
"Why did you say you hate yellow, Chinese, Asians, and want to murder everybody and their babies?"
"Err... ???"
That's actually not too bad a paraphrasing, if I do say so myself. How ya doing this morning?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Adam Smith warned that charters should only be granted under exceptional circumstances and then the resulting corporation should be kept on a short leash. This was exactly related to moral behavior (or the lack thereof).
But none of that need totally halt stock nor need it result in unlimited liability. For example, the major stockholders (the people big enough that the board will personally answer their phone calls) might have to indemnify the smaller investors.
But overall, it might be NECESSARY to push smaller investors out of the market so that the courts won't be afraid to drop the hammer on serial offending corporations.
My Ex posted our Sex Videos online and when I took him to court, he pleaded guilty and had to serve 240 hours community service and 90 days in jail. He was also a pizza boy so I did expect to see much money anyways. The videos were reported and must removed.... That was it. Do I hope that old fuck doesn't get a penny.
The problem is that most of us don't know what illegal actions a company might be doing. This applies to most stockholders and employees. If we were held legally liable for what our investments and employers were doing, a lot of us wouldn't invest in stocks. For practical purposes, we can have a stock market with limited liability, or we can have no stock market. For all of its flaws and problems, the stock market is important for the economy.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I'd say the unknowing should not be impacted at *any* additional level. If you did not know, did not agree with, did not expressly condone such then you're not accountable for it. We might so so far as to use legal terms. "Should the share-holder have reasonably believed that the company was acting illegally in this specific fashion?" We might also go, "Pursuant to the former, what would a reasonable person conclude the level of culpability specifically consider circumstances including, but not limited to, the culpable party's obligation to report, legally mandated or not or the accused's duty to have known, or made known, the alleged act or to take action to prevent the action in question?" A mitigating factor might be, and could be an affirmative defense, something akin to, "The accused, if faced with significant duress where such circumstances meet the threshold for physical response (per statute blah blah blah pursuant to A & B) and having no reasonable opportunity to withdraw from such circumstances shall be subject to X & Y not included, nor to exceed Z & A."
Something like that. I pulled it out of my ass, obviously, and there are lots of place to improve it but that should get the gist across... Thoughts?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."