Alex Jones must still pay $1.3 billion Sandy Hook defamation verdict, appeals court rules

A Connecticut appeals court on Friday largely upheld a nearly $1.3 billion defamation verdict against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a case accusing the Infowars founder of spreading lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting.

A three-judge panel of the Connecticut Court of Appeals found 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 anguish that they suffered because of lies from Jones about Sandy Hook.

In affirming the verdict, the justices found fault only with a portion that awarded $150 million in damages under a state unfair trade practices law, finding that it should be thrown out because it did not properly apply to the facts of the case.

Jones claimed for years that the 2012 shooting death of 20 students and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was staged as part of a government plot to seize guns from Americans. He has since admitted that the mass shooting happened, but prosecutors said Jones won for years by lying about the massacre.

An attorney for the Sandy Hook families, Alinor Sterling, praised the decision.

“The $965 million jury verdict against Jones will stand, and the families who fought valiantly for years have brought Alex Jones one step closer to true justice,” Sterling said in a statement.

Jones’ attorney, Norm Pattis, said in a statement that the jury was falsely led to believe that Jones made millions of dollars from Sandy Hook conspiracy theories and that Jones was to blame for the families’ distress.

“We had hoped that the Court of Appeal would have seen through the charade and farce that this trial has become. It didn’t happen,” 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 Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2022 after the ruling in Connecticut and another in Texas, where a jury in a similar case ruled against other Sandy Hook parents 49 million dollars.

In November, the parody news site Onion announced it would buy Infowars in a bankruptcy auction, although a losing bidder linked to Jones is challenging the sale.

A bankruptcy judge will consider whether to approve Onion’s acquisition of Infowars at a court hearing Monday in Houston.