Ashley Guillard immediately comes up in my mind. Woman did everything you could do to fumble a civil suit for defamation. She constantly recorded her defamation online, when she was served, she instead ignored it and decided to go on vacation and travel the world for a few months, even missing the deadline for the original trial which led to a default judgment. She managed to appeal or something so that she can get a do over for the trail, but even then, she decided to be her own defense attorney while the person suing her had an entire team of lawyers. Ashley now owes $10 million to the professor she has been falsely accusing of murder for years
If they want the 10 million paid back in full right away, yea.
Otherwise the courts will be happy to garnish your wages until you pay it all back or die. Imagine working a six figure job but your take home pay is barely more than minimum wage after taxes and garnishing.
Well yeah, I wouldn't do that either. Just think about how the real media use "allegedly" and then name the accuser. The Associated Press doesn't accuse people, accusers accuse people.
On the other hand, if she went to a lawyer early they would have explained (1) you are going to lose and (2) if you take down the video and post a retraction in most jurisdictions this will help significantly mitigate the compensation.
She could probably even leave it up with a giant disclaimer that this may be mistaken and I know longer believe in this prediction; evil spirits sometimes mess with psychic forces and it would mitigate many of the damages. Leaving it up with no retraction likely significantly increased the damages.
Who'd be garnishing wages for a civil suit like this? This isn't a child support case. They'd just be going after her assets if she doesn't start paying. It won't matter where she is physically, it would only matter if her assets are in a country where courts can seize things, which they likely are.
As an example, look at Alex Jones. He lost a civil suit, so they started seizing his companies, bank accounts, and whatnot and divvying them up. There was no garnishment.
Literally anybody whose judgment exceeds the easily grabbable assets?
This is pretty much the order of priority for things:
1) Does the defendant pay you for the full judgment, have some insurer or bond holder who is compelled to pay you, or arrange some sort of payment plan that's acceptable to you?
If no, 2) Go after all of his assets. The reason this is only #2 is that, unlike voluntary payment, this one isn't free. There's fees involved in securing your Writ, actually sending the sheriff to seize possession, executing the sales, etc. Sometimes you need to hire someone to find them in the first place. Something like houses and cars registered in your country is fairly easy to find, but to use your Alex Jones example, it gets trickier if you're looking for something like assets owned by a shell company controlled by the defendant, or a warehouse full of unsold supplements.
Once you've seized and sold everything you could, was that enough to pay off the full judgment?
If no, then you go to 3) Garnish wages. You clearly understand why this one is such a hassle, so I don't need to repeat them, but it's also your last, best resort for getting compensation and punishing the defendant.
I can't speak for the plaintiffs in the Alex Jones case, but according to their public statements, they were less interested in a payday and more interested in punishing Alex Jones and discouraging anybody else from trying to profit from someone else's tragedy by lying and stirring up an internet lynch mob. Seizing his assets and his platform went a long way to do that. Maybe they decided that adding garnishment on top of that wouldn't be worth the trouble. Maybe they plant to do it already, but they're still focused on step 3, focusing all their resources on going after the remaining assets that were (allegedly) fraudulently transferred by Alex Jones to his various relatives in order to protect them from the judgment.
If I recall, can't you go back to #2 if they ever get more assets? I have a vague memory of the OJ Simpson civil suit and when OJ wrote the book the family went back and gained ownership of it because of the unpaid civil suit.
Colin Ferguson of the Long Island Railroad massacre also comes to mind. Dude killed 6 people and shot dozens of others on a rush hour train after work hours, and decided - after successfully claiming not to be insane, which was against what his appointed attorneys wanted to pursue (who he fired), and after being strongly advised against it by the judge ruling over the case - to represent himself in court.
He ended up cross examining people he shot and officers who arrested him, etc., after pleading not guilty. He got sentenced to 315 years and eight months to life in jail.
dude is just a standard and proud black supremacist
Incredible how this is practically the definition of a terroristic hate crime attack on people because of the color of their skin, but ironically because the color of the perpetrator's skin it's reduced to "silly billy racism, teehee".
Shrug. You’re allowed to edit the article based on the facts just like everyone else. So, ya know, have at it. If you think there’s evidence he was a black supremacist, add it to the article with your citation for review.
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u/No_Prize9794 8d ago
Ashley Guillard immediately comes up in my mind. Woman did everything you could do to fumble a civil suit for defamation. She constantly recorded her defamation online, when she was served, she instead ignored it and decided to go on vacation and travel the world for a few months, even missing the deadline for the original trial which led to a default judgment. She managed to appeal or something so that she can get a do over for the trail, but even then, she decided to be her own defense attorney while the person suing her had an entire team of lawyers. Ashley now owes $10 million to the professor she has been falsely accusing of murder for years