Alex Jones Gets Partial Win as Sandy Hook Family's Texas Judgment Is Reduced
A Texas appeals court has slashed a $50 million judgment against Alex Jones for falsely calling the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a hoax, cutting the amount he must pay to roughly $6 million.
The Texas Third Court of Appeals ruled unanimously Friday, Aug. 21, upholding the $4.1 million in compensatory damages a jury had awarded to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, one of 20 first graders and six educators killed in the shooting. But the court reduced the jury's $45.2 million punitive damages award to $1.5 million, citing a Texas law that caps punitive damages at $750,000 per plaintiff.
Why the Court Reduced the Award
The Texas Third Court of Appeals found that Heslin and Lewis had not presented sufficient evidence that harassment from Jones' followers rose to a level that would allow damages to exceed the state's statutory cap, even as the court rejected other arguments Jones raised challenging the underlying verdict. Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, had been found liable for defamation after Jones spent years telling his Infowars audience that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged and that grieving families were actors participating in a government plot to restrict gun rights, claims that led to years of harassment and death threats against relatives of the victims.
Jones' trial attorney, Andino Reynal, had predicted immediately after the original verdict that the punitive damages would be reduced to roughly $1.5 million on appeal, a prediction that proved accurate.
How Jones and the Families Responded
Jones celebrated the ruling, calling it "a gigantic victory for the First Amendment" and saying he intends to continue appealing to the Texas Supreme Court in an effort to have the remaining damages dismissed entirely.
Mark Bankston, an attorney for Heslin and Lewis, pushed back on the idea that the ruling represents a meaningful win for Jones, telling Al Jazeera, "Jones still faces over a billion dollars of liability, so this changes absolutely nothing." He added, "All it does is highlight the absurdity of Texas law."
How This Fits Into Jones' Broader Legal Troubles
Friday's ruling does not affect a separate $1.25 billion judgment against Jones in Connecticut, where he was also found liable for defaming and causing emotional distress to Sandy Hook families in a related case. The U.S. Supreme Court previously declined to hear Jones' appeal of that judgment.
Christopher Mattei, an attorney for the Sandy Hook families in the Connecticut case, said the Texas ruling has no bearing on ongoing proceedings involving the liquidation of Infowars' parent company, which remains tied up in bankruptcy court. Jones gave up the Infowars brand in April, and the satirical outlet The Onion has since taken over the platform, using it to run parody content mocking Jones' past conspiracy theories. Despite the mounting judgments against him, Jones has yet to make any payments toward either the Texas or Connecticut awards as his appeals and bankruptcy proceedings continue.
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