After years of going back and forth legally, the Mitchell v Jobst case was finally heard by a court. After several days of deliberation, a verdict was reached and Karl Jobst lost.
Karl Jobst is a YouTuber who primarily focuses on speedrunning, with him making several videos claiming that Billy Mitchell cheated in his world record attempts and making several other claims against his character. As a result, Mitchell sued.
It was a defamation suit raised against Jobst, one raised on the basis that Mitchell was wrongly accused of pushing YouTuber Apollo Legend to take his own life.
Apollo made a final goodbye video before that, however, and the Queensland court cited that video in this case. He made no mention of Billy Mitchell in his final upload.
This, combined with Jobst claiming that Mitchell “expressed joy at the thought” of Apollo Legend’s death in one of the videos, ultimately led the court to rule in Mitchell’s favor. Now, Jobst has to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in punitive damages.
Karl Jobst forced to pay punitive damages to Billy Mitchell
Karl Jobst made several videos about Billy Mitchell, calling him a “con man” and making a number of claims against his character. The allegations of him cheating at video games were barely mentioned in the court hearing.
In the official court verdict, Jobst’s conduct was criticized directly by the judge:
“Mr Jobst’s conduct in this litigation, together with his additional online comments about it, were aggravating features of his conduct. He seems to see himself in defending this claim as a crusader against Mr. Mitchell,” he said.
“Mr. Jobst clearly intended to be the knight who slew the Mitchell dragon. Unfortunately for him, his lance was not as strong as he believed it to be, and it has broken in the contest.”
It was ultimately ruled that Jobst’s claims were damaging, and that he’d be forced to pay substantial punitive damages.
What’s more, the speedrunning YouTuber edited the video that Billy Mitchell sued him over to remove the statement about Apollo Legend and retracted the statement in a later upload. This video, titled ‘The Greatest Feat In Video Game History‘, did not mention Mitchell in any way outside of a quick segment at the end, with the rest of the video being entirely irrelevant to the case.
“That video did not retract the imputations at all. It simply retracted the statement that Apollo Legend had paid Mr. Mitchell a large sum of money. Mr. Jobst did not apologize to Mr. Mitchell in any way, rather apologizing to his viewers for having made an incorrect statement in the offending video.”
It was ruled that even Jobst’s retraction was incorrect, and that he wrongly accused Mitchell of not reaching out to him to try and clear things up. As a result, this retraction not only didn’t help Jobst, it actually hurt him and forced him to pay even more money and contributed to having to pay even more in aggravated damages.
Karl Jobst was forced to pay $300k AUD in non-economic losses and $50k AUD in aggravated damages. And, with it having been almost 4 years since Jobst posted his original video with these defamatory claims, an interest rate was placed on the amount of damages, which ended up being $40,446.58.
In total, the YouTuber now owes $390,446.58 AUD (around $245k USD) to Billy Mitchell, which may also include the price of his legal fees that were incurred as a result of the suit.
“I lost. The judge found Billy to be a credible witness and believed his entire testimony. From that point on unfortunately there was really nothing that could have saved me. I will now obviously consider my options,” Jobst said of the verdict.
Content shared from www.dexerto.com.