No it really doesn't. There are no legal consequences for insulting someone, unless you actually defame them. Nearly all defamation cases are dismissed by the court immediately for not rising to the very high level of facts required for defamation.
Yes, defamation. Many such cases are dismissed; this one was not and resulted in large punitive damages being awarded.
Less relevant to this case, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress can also both be against the law in the United States.
The interesting precedent here is if you lie about the dead (who until this fiction, had no protection from defamation), you have defamed any living person who says the opposite and factual information about them.
But we all know the precedent set in this case was a lie. Otherwise anyone who said the kids were really killed would have standing, since Jones thought they were "crisis actors."
We all know this was really used as a back door way to pay the parents for dishonoring the dead. Basically "meh we can't extract justice from the murderer, best we can do is get a lot of money from someone with mutual hate."
Edit: s/precedent/historical precedent/ . I did not mean to imply as assumed below this precedent is legally binding.
Interesting analysis... one potential wrinkle: There is no precedent being set here. This is just the expected outcome within the framework set by past precedent... Nothing novel or new happened wrt the law or anything else. It's just a bog standard case of a trashy asshole riling up his idiotic followers for money, and taking it well beyond the long established line of acceptable.
