Alex Jones was ordered to pay an additional $472 million in punitive damages and attorneys’ fees on top of the nearly $1 billion verdict a Connecticut jury imposed on him for spreading lies about the Sandy Hook school massacre.
Connecticut state court judge Barbara Bellis on Thursday found that the Infowars host’s conduct merited his payment of punitive as well as the compensatory damages to the families of the victims of the 2012 school shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 first graders and six educators. She awarded $150 million in punitive damages as well as $321.7 million in legal fees that Jones must pay the victims’ lawyers under a one-third contingency-fee arrangement.
Norm Pattis, Jones’s lawyer, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Bellis’s rulings.
Jones has pushed a conspiracy theory that the shooting was a government hoax staged with “crisis actors” to influence gun-control policy. Sued by five Sandy Hook families and a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who responded to the shooting, Jones was found to have defamed the families and violated a state law forbidding the sale of products with false statements — he frequently pushed vitamin supplements and survival gear on shows in which he lied about the shooting.
A jury on Oct. 12 ordered Jones to pay $965 million in compensatory damages for reputational harm and emotional distress suffered by the victims. Despite the already hefty verdict, lawyers for the plaintiffs urged Bellis to award the maximum possible punitive damages to stop Jones from continuing to spread his lies.
Bellis said she based her punitive damages award on the degree of maliciousness of Jones’s behavior, as well as his intentional decisions to conceal his financial resources and continue tormenting the families for profit a decade, even on shows broadcast during the trial.
‘Cruel, Persistent’
“This depravity, and cruel, persistent course of conduct by the defendants establishes the highest degree of reprehensibility and blameworthiness,” the judge said in her 45-page decision.
But the punitive award wasn’t the highest Bellis could have imposed. She said in her ruling that legal precedent would have permitted her to impose a punitive damages award that was double the jury verdict — or nearly $2 billion — but she also noted that both the US and Connecticut supreme courts discouraged disproportionately large punitive damages award that could be seen as a “windfall” to plaintiffs.
Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the families, praised Bellis’s award on Thursday. “The court recognized the intentional, malicious and heinous conduct of Mr. Jones and his business entities,” Mattei said in an email. “Our hope is that this serves to reinforce the message of this case: those who profit from lies targeting the innocent will face justice.”
Jones mocked the jury verdict on air almost as soon as it was issued, disparaging the massacre and vowing to appeal any court order. He’s already asked Bellis to set aside the jury’s verdict as legally flawed and order a new trial. The judge has not yet ruled on that request.
Hiding Assets
Pattis had asked Bellis to award only nominal attorneys’ fees and punitive damages, claiming the jury’s award was punishment enough. However, Pattis also acknowledged it is unclear what sum – even trillions in damages – would be enough to change Jones’s behavior.
Whether Jones will pay any part of the verdict remains a major question hanging over the case. The families have accused Jones of hiding assets and looting profits through a series of shell companies controlled by family members.
Bellis earlier on Thursday granted the families’ request to temporarily order Jones and his companies not to transfer or dispose of any assets without her permission. Mattei applauded that decision as well.
“This is the first step in making sure that Jones personally will pay every penny he has to the families he spent years tormenting,” he said.
Fundraising Pleas
The families also asked that Jones be ordered to provide a complete accounting of his assets, which he has steadfastly refused to provide, and that he be required to bring all movable property to Connecticut for safekeeping by the court. The judge hasn’t yet addressed those requests.
Jones put Infowars’s parent company, Free Speech Systems LLC, into bankruptcy this summer and has repeatedly insisted he intends to never pay the families a dime. He’s issued multiple fundraising pleas to his millions of followers to support him as he continues questioning the shooting and appealing the verdicts against him.
During the Connecticut trial, one of Jones’s executives testified that corporate revenues ranged between $100 million and $1 billion in the 10 years after Sandy Hook. In a previous Sandy Hook defamation trial, a financial expert testified Jones’s net worth likely ranges between $135 million and $270 million.
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