With ABC paying Trump $15 million as a settlement for defamation, it's probably the right time to talk about how people treat lawsuits, decisions regarding lawsuits, and choices of corporations and wealthy people to settle.
The reason why this is such a great time to talk about this is that almost nobody on the Left is happy that ABC is paying Trump millions of dollars. Also, a lot of people on the Left have said exactly the same thing about Trump that George Stephanopoulos said that got him in trouble.
First of all, like it or not, what Stephanopoulos said was objectively and probably false. Trump was not found liable of rape. The jury refused to find Trump liable of that accusation. Stephanopoulos didn't phrase anything as a question or as an opinion. He repeatedly claimed that Trump was found civilly liable for rape.
So, Trump definitely had a case. It's a pretty simple distinction. Most of us believe that O.J. was guilty of murder despite being acquitted. We're all allowed to say that we believe that he got away with murder. Still, if one were to say that O.J. was a convicted murderer, that would be provably false and likely to fall under defamation. You're allowed to express your opinion that Trump is a rapist until the cows come home. It's a potential legal problem if you falsely claim that he was found guilty or liable.
Still, given how stacked American law is against plaintiffs in defamation cases, ABC and Stephanopoulos probably had a good chance of winning if they fought it.
So, why settle?
A lot of reasons, actually. One reason is that Stephanopoulos did make factually false claims about Trump. Even if the claims were plausibly true, there's always a better than zero chance that a jury will rule the other way. Even if you fight it, and win, the defendant is always on the hook for legal defense fees. In a case like this, the legal fees could be in the millions. Even if ABC and Stephanopoulos won, the public nature of the trial could have made them look bad in ways that you and I can't even imagine.
I think that it's safe to assume that most of my leftist friends are on ABC's side here. A lot of you are probably more receptive to listening to reason in regard to why possibly innocent corporations or rich people might choose to settle. You might see why the choice to settle isn't always an admission of guilt.
The thing is, cases like this happen all the time. Actually, far more frivolous lawsuits than this are filed all the time. Since leftists generally hate corporations and rich people unless they're leftist corporations and rich people, leftists tend to view settlements as admissions of guilt.
I've been through management training myself. To keep myself out of legal trouble myself, I'm not gonna say which company. But, it's a company that gets sued by leftists a lot. The policy was made clear -- pay the suit, no matter how frivolous. Most of the lawsuits that were filed were frivolous. I would dare to say that most of the lawsuits that came to my attention were filed because the plaintiff knew how this works. It's cheaper for the company to pay. It's a win/win for the plaintiff regardless of what the company does. No matter what, there's a record of another settled lawsuit that useful idiots will take as further proof of corporate misdeeds.
Why do you actually think that PLACCA exists? The mere fact that Remington and Daniel Defense were recently, nearly sued into oblivion should be proof enough that it's a lie to claim that PLACCA makes it impossible to sue gun manufacturers. It exists because anti-gun groups were trying to get around constitutional law and democracy by bankrupting the gun manufacturers into oblivion with frivolous lawsuits. The fact that these companies paid settlements on recent lawsuits doesn't mean that the companies did anything wrong. It just means that they made pragmatic decisions.
This all goes both ways. ABC is a corporation just like every other. George Stephanopoulos is a rich person, just like a lot of other rich people in media. Decisions like this are normal, and they mean a lot less than you think they mean.