This article discusses distressing topics, including suicide.
Summary
A court in Australia has ruled that YouTuber Karl Jobst must pay Billy Mitchell 380,000 Australian dollars ($238,000) in damages following comments Jobst made about the settlement between Mitchell and YouTuber Apollo Legend, aka Benjamin Smith. Jobst implied in a 2021 video that the settlement played a role in Smith’s death.
This article discusses distressing topics, such as suicide.
As reported by PC Gamer, the judge reached the verdict this week, bringing the curtain down on a lawsuit that was filed by Mitchell in September 2024, although his and Jobst’s issues extend back years. At the center of the suit was a video Jobst posted on YouTube in 2021 titled The Biggest Conmen In Video Game History Strike Again.
In the video, Jobst claimed Mitchell had “expressed joy at the thought” of Smith’s death. Smith committed suicide a year prior, and Jobst implied that the issues between him and Mitchell were a factor in Smith taking his own life. Mitchel published a follow-up, retracting those comments in July 2021.
Billy Mitchell Has Won His Defamation Lawsuit Against Karl Jobst
Jobst Must Now Pay Mitchell More Than $200,000 In Damages
This saga stretches back to 2017 when Mitchell was accused of falsifying records he’d held for years. Those accusations eventually led to Mitchell’sDonkey Kongrecords being removed by Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records. Guinness has since reinstated Mitchell’s records, while Twin Galaxies has put him back on its historical leaderboards but has left him off its contemporary ones.
Smith was one of the people Mitchell went after following the allegations as the late YouTuber accused him of cheating to attain his records. The lawsuit was settled in 2020, and Smith committed suicide that same year. Jobst claimed the money Smith had to pay Mitchell as part of that settlement contributed to the YouTuber taking his own life. However, in the suit that concluded this week, the judge confirmed no money changed hands as a result of the lawsuit between Mitchell and Smith.
According to the judge, the settlement between Mitchell and Smith ordered the YouTuber to remove all videos and social media posts about Mitchell, and that he would be issued a $25,000 fine every time he broke that agreement.
The judge overseeing the case between Mitchell and Jobst noted that the latter could have been ordered to pay the former even more. However, since Mitchell was only seeking 50,000 Australian dollars in aggravated damages, that’s all the judge awarded, on top of the 300,000 Australian dollars award for damages for non-economic loss.
