Written by Jack Queen
(Reuters) – A Connecticut federal court on Friday upheld a $1.3 billion defamation judgment against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a case accusing the Infowars founder of spreading falsehoods about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.
A three-judge panel of the Connecticut Appellate Court found that the court’s decision in October 2022 to award $965 million in damages as well as attorneys’ fees and costs to the families of the gun victims was unreasonable due to the emotional distress they suffered due to Jones’ lies. Sandy Hook.
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In upholding the verdict, the jury found guilty only in part awarding $150 million in damages under the state’s unfair trade practices law, finding that it should be thrown out because it did not apply properly to the facts of the case.
Jones has said for years that the 2012 shooting deaths of 20 students and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, were carried out by activists as part of the government’s plan to take away guns from Americans. He has since admitted that the mass shooting took place, but prosecutors said Jones paid for years from his lies about the killings.
The attorney for the Sandy Hook families, Alinor Sterling, praised the verdict.
“Jones’ $965 million fine will stand, and the families who fought valiantly for years brought Alex Jones one step closer to true justice,” Sterling said in a statement.
Jones’ attorney, Norm Pattis, said in a statement that jurors were falsely led to believe that Jones made millions of dollars from the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories and that Jones was the cause of the family’s distress.
“We were hoping that the Supreme Court would have seen through the fraud and be happy that this trial was. It didn’t,” said Pattis, adding that he plans to appeal to the Connecticut Supreme Court.
Jones and the parent company of his Infowars site, Free Speech Systems, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2022 after verdicts in Connecticut and another in Texas, where judges in a similar case awarded some Sandy Hook parents $49 million.
In November, the Onion parody news website announced that it would buy Infowars in a bankruptcy auction, although a losing buyer joined Jones in opposing the sale.
A bankruptcy judge will decide whether to approve the Onion’s purchase of Infowars at a court hearing Monday in Houston.
(Reporting by Jack Queen; Editing by Will Dunham)