By Jack Queen
(Reuters) – A Connecticut appeals court on Friday largely upheld a nearly $1.3 billion defamation judgment against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a case accusing the Infowars founder of spreading lies about the Sandy Hook mass shooting in 2012.
A three-judge panel of the Connecticut Appellate Court ruled that a jury’s October 2022 decision to award $965 million in damages plus attorneys’ fees and costs to the families of the shooting victims was not unreasonable given the mental pain they suffered as a result of Jones’ lies about Sandy Hook.
In affirming the verdict, the justices found only error in awarding $150 million in damages under a state unfair trade practices law, finding it should be dismissed because it did not properly apply to the facts of the case .
Jones claimed for years that the 2012 shooting of 20 students and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was staged with actors as part of a government scheme to confiscate guns from Americans. He has since acknowledged that the mass shooting occurred, but prosecutors say Jones profited from his lies about the massacre for years.
An attorney for the Sandy Hook families, Alinor Sterling, praised the ruling.
“The jury’s $965 million reprimand of Jones will stand, and the families who fought valiantly for years have brought Alex Jones one step closer to real justice,” Sterling said in a statement.
Jones’ attorney Norm Pattis said in a statement that the jury was wrongly led to believe that Jones made millions of dollars from the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories and that Jones was responsible for the families’ fear.
“We had hoped that the Court of Appeals would have seen through the charade and farce that this trial would become. It did not,” Pattis said, 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 bankruptcy protection in 2022 following the verdict in Connecticut and another in Texas, where a jury in a similar case awarded other Sandy Hook parents $49 million.
In November, the Onion parody news website announced it would buy Infowars through a bankruptcy auction, although a losing bidder tied to Jones challenged the sale.
A bankruptcy judge will consider whether or not to approve Onion’s purchase of Infowars during a hearing in Houston on Monday.
