The Connecticut state appellate court on Friday affirmed a $965m verdict from 2022 against far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, determining there is “sufficient evidence” to support the damages awarded to relatives of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre victims and an FBI agent.
In its unanimous opinion, the court cited the “traumatic threats and harassment” the families endured “stemming from the lies, as propagated by the defendants, that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax”.
“Our review of the record reveals that there was sufficient evidence to support the [$965m] in compensatory damages awarded by the jury,” according to the 62-page decision. It marks the largest jury verdict in Connecticut history.
The appellate court did grant Jones a $150m reprieve. It determined the plaintiffs “failed to assert a legally viable” claim under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act and that $150m in punitive damages awarded by the lower court must be vacated, noting the plaintiffs alleged injury came from false language and not from speech related to advertising, marketing or the sale of goods.
“We’re relieved that the court protected the press with its decision reversing the damages in the unfair trade practices claim, but we are otherwise disappointed,” said Norm Pattis, Jones’s attorney, in a statement. He said the jury in the case was “sold a bill of goods and led to believe” Jones made millions spreading conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook mass shooting.
“He didn’t. The jury was also encouraged to believe that all the sorrow that befell the plaintiffs was Mr Jones’s fault. It wasn’t,” Pattis said. “We had hoped the appellate court would have seen through the charade and farce that this trial became. It didn’t.”
Jones now owes a total of roughly $1.2bn, counting the $965m to the Connecticut families and nearly $50m awarded by a Texas jury to the parents of a Sandy Hook child who was killed.
Jones filed for personal bankruptcy in 2022, and the sale of his Infowars platform is part of that case. A bid by the Onion satirical news outlet to buy Infowars is scheduled to return on Monday to a Texas courtroom, where a judge will be deciding whether a bankruptcy auction was properly run. Jones alleges collusion and fraud.
Lawyers for the Sandy Hook families hailed the Connecticut appellate court’s ruling on Friday as an overall victory.
“Today, Alex Jones’s effort to overturn the jury’s historic verdict against him and his corrupt business, Infowars, was unanimously rejected by the Connecticut appellate court,” the lawyers said in a statement. “The jury’s $965m rebuke of Jones will stand, and the families who have fought valiantly for years have brought Alex Jones yet another step closer to true justice.”
Pattis said he will ask the Connecticut state supreme court to review the appellate court decision.
Jones repeatedly told his millions of followers the 2012 massacre that killed 20 first graders and six educators was staged by “crisis actors” to enact more gun control.
The appellate court also determined that a lower court “properly exercised its discretion” in finding Jones and his Infowars’ parent company Free Speech Systems LLC liable for damages by default for failing to cooperate with court rules on sharing evidence.
