Return to “Jesse Ventura wins $1.84M in defamation suit v. Chris Kyle”
Well now, that puts him in the same fraternity as Rosie O'Donnell, Sylvester Stallone, Barry Diller, and others who said they'd leave the U.S. if a particular person won an election. Unfortunately, none of the dirt bags left.philip964 wrote:Jesse says he will leave the country if he loses appeal.
None of that matters unless there's a scientifically sound method to estimate books sales with and without the Ventura incident and there is none. There's no accurate, scientific way to say the book sold one more copy because of the Ventura incident, so there's no evidence of unjust enrichment. Since there's no legally admissible evidence to establish unjust enrichment, you never reach the question of how much. Everything you mention is speculation. You presume Kyle, a war hero with a record number of kills, wouldn't have gotten interviews without the Ventura incident. You presume that such interviews sold more copies of the book. All of that is speculation. Obviously, the local bias played a major role in an unjust enrichment question going to the jury. Hopefully, an appellate court will fix it.EEllis wrote:I'm obviously not a legal scholar so as a layman here is a possibility as I see it. I don't think the story about "Scruff face" sold anything. I think that would be a horrible argument. I do think that the argument that Kyle used that story to get press which then increased his sales would have merit. There have been references to publisher email which talked about using the story and I believe Kyle was on some shows just because of the controversy which that publicity would obviously help his book sales. I don't think it would be hard to show that Kyle received some benefit by using that story to sell his book that translated directly into money. The only issue I would see is how to measure that amount. The idea that a person could show that there was unjust enrichment but because you can't put an exact dollar amount on it you would be unable to recover anything seem unjust at best. Now my understanding in Fed court you don't have to have an exact amount to receive compensation. That it considers unjust enrichment an equitable claim and allow a judge to decide the amount. I've been looking for a law blog that goes more into depth on this subject but haven't had any luck yet.Charles L. Cotton wrote:Yes, I/we do conclusively know that the unjust enrichment award is without a factual basis. That type of claim cannot be quantified in terms of sales of a book that covers many topics. Valid unjust enrichment claims are typically based upon sales of a product or service when the seller/provider violated patents, wrongfully obtained trade secret information, etc. The sales are easily quantifiable.EEllis wrote:All I would have to say is that we don't know what the argument is so it's a bit much for me to say that the plaintiffs argumentis without merit or without factual basis.Charles L. Cotton wrote:
Local bias is rarely quantifiable which is why federal law allows state court claims to be filed in (or removed to) federal court under a "Diversity" claim. (That is diversity of state residency.) An entire body of federal law is based upon the reality of local bias. I see it on an intrastate level every time I try a case in a small county and one party or the other is not a resident of that county.
Apparently I misunderstood your numbers argument. You were talking about the amount of money going to the widow v. the money going to Ventura. I thought you were trying to counter my argument that it's impossible to provide accurate evidence about how much more the book allegedly sold because of the inclusion of the Ventura argument, as opposed to what sales would have been without including that incident. Your point is the widow isn't "poor;" my point is that the jury verdict on unjust enrichment is utterly without factual basis. (BTW, I never referred to Chris' widow being poor, only that Ventura went after the widow of a war hero and that's PR suicide.)
Chas.
It is impossible, not difficult, not problematic, it's impossible to accurately estimate how many books would have been sold if the Ventura incident had not been included. It's equally impossible to even say that book sales would have been lower at all; they could just as easily been higher without the Ventura incident. Therefore, the jury award for unjust enrichment was purely speculative and speculative damages don't fly in Texas.
I don't need to hear or read what garbage plaintiff's counsel sold to the court or jury to know speculative damages when I see them being awarded. In fact, that's covered in law school in the required "Remedies" course, so even a second year law student knows garbage when they see it. The Texas Supreme Court has addressed "junk science" in appellate cases, so this isn't new or unexplored territory.
Chas.
Also I would think that since we are dealing with book sales you should be able to get some figures on the subject. While they can't be exact I bet the publisher has to have some idea of how much publicity affects sales. How much they expect to recoup from PR expenditures. Heck I've heard at least one email from the publisher was introduced talking about pushing the JV fight story so I wonder if there were other email?
Yes, I/we do conclusively know that the unjust enrichment award is without a factual basis. That type of claim cannot be quantified in terms of sales of a book that covers many topics. Valid unjust enrichment claims are typically based upon sales of a product or service when the seller/provider violated patents, wrongfully obtained trade secret information, etc. The sales are easily quantifiable.EEllis wrote:All I would have to say is that we don't know what the argument is so it's a bit much for me to say that the plaintiffs argumentis without merit or without factual basis.Charles L. Cotton wrote:
Local bias is rarely quantifiable which is why federal law allows state court claims to be filed in (or removed to) federal court under a "Diversity" claim. (That is diversity of state residency.) An entire body of federal law is based upon the reality of local bias. I see it on an intrastate level every time I try a case in a small county and one party or the other is not a resident of that county.
Apparently I misunderstood your numbers argument. You were talking about the amount of money going to the widow v. the money going to Ventura. I thought you were trying to counter my argument that it's impossible to provide accurate evidence about how much more the book allegedly sold because of the inclusion of the Ventura argument, as opposed to what sales would have been without including that incident. Your point is the widow isn't "poor;" my point is that the jury verdict on unjust enrichment is utterly without factual basis. (BTW, I never referred to Chris' widow being poor, only that Ventura went after the widow of a war hero and that's PR suicide.)
Chas.
Local bias is rarely quantifiable which is why federal law allows state court claims to be filed in (or removed to) federal court under a "Diversity" claim. (That is diversity of state residency.) An entire body of federal law is based upon the reality of local bias. I see it on an intrastate level every time I try a case in a small county and one party or the other is not a resident of that county.EEllis wrote:I understand the theory but have seem nothing that makes me believe that JV is that popular even in Min. Nothing I've read seen or heard gives any real support for that idea. At the most JV would get 1.3 from the estate. JV's lawyers claim 6 mil income from the book but lets say it's closer to 3 or 4. Max JV might take 1/3 of what supposedly isn't even going to be kept or used by the Widow. That is why I said JV wasn't taking money from a poor widow. As to how they arrived at that figure I have zero idea. Have you seen any of the evidence or heard anything that I missed about what the lawyers used to try and convince the jury? From my understanding it's not even final till the judge rules on it and he may very well agree with you. My issue is the pronouncements without real info. Basically guesses and assumptions stated as facts. I'm sure they are educated guesses and reasonable assumptions but still.....Charles L. Cotton wrote: If you can't see that being a hometown plaintiff gives one an advantage over an absentee defendant, then you simply don't understand the dynamics of jury trials. That's the entire justification for being able to get state claims into federal court under a diversity theory, but even that's a joke. The jury comes from the same pool of citizens and the judge almost always comes from a state court bench. So eliminating local bias by trying the case in federal court instead of state court is a farce.
I don't know where you are getting the 1/3 percentage for unjust enrichment, but regardless is unfounded. There simply is no way to get reliable evidence to prove that, but for the Ventura incident, the book would have generated only $X as opposed to $Y with the incident included. That's why Texas has a strong rule against speculative damages; we don't let juries award money damages on a hunch or junk science.
Chas.
If you can't see that being a hometown plaintiff gives one an advantage over an absentee defendant, then you simply don't understand the dynamics of jury trials. That's the entire justification for being able to get state claims into federal court under a diversity theory, but even that's a joke. The jury comes from the same pool of citizens and the judge almost always comes from a state court bench. So eliminating local bias by trying the case in federal court instead of state court is a farce.EEllis wrote:Nothing I'm seeing makes me think that JV had any preferential treatment or that his popularity affected him in any positive way. During this trial his celebrity works against him by raising the burden of proof and he still managed to convince 8 out of 10 and convince them that he was do considerable recompense. But even tho people haven't seen the evidence it must be the wrong verdict. Going by the response here it's a good thing the trial wasn't it Texas because I don't see how JV could have a fair hearing and that just saddens me. As to the comment you responded to my point was that in its entirety the award would probably be worth maybe a third of what this book has brought to the estate so far leaving the widow anything but poor regardless of the end result.Charles L. Cotton wrote:I don't know anything about the lawsuit, other than what has been in the media. Even if Chris' wife wasn't a named party, Ventura was going after her as she is the beneficiary of his estate. Whatever he takes from Chris' estate is something his widow will not receive.EEllis wrote:The idea that JV is going after a poor widow is pure fantasy.
On the subject of fantasy, any finding by a jury of unjust enrichment due to the inclusion of the Kyle/Ventura incident, if any, is pure fantasy. There's no way to provide reliable evidence as to how much more money was generated by the inclusion of that event in the book. If the case had been filed and tried in Texas, it's doubtful the jury would have even seen that question in the jury charge. We correctly don't allow recovery of speculative damages.
As I said before, I didn't see the evidence or hear the testimony, but I suspect the verdict was influenced by the fact that it was tried in Minnesota (Ventura country) and the defendant was not a favorite son. I may be wrong, but there must be some explanation for the jury award on purely speculative damages.
Chas.
I don't know anything about the lawsuit, other than what has been in the media. Even if Chris' wife wasn't a named party, Ventura was going after her as she is the beneficiary of his estate. Whatever he takes from Chris' estate is something his widow will not receive.EEllis wrote:The idea that JV is going after a poor widow is pure fantasy.