Showdown delayed over whether Texas cap should apply to Alex Jones verdict

A judge who’d planned to hear arguments Thursday about whether a Texas law capping punitive damages at $750,000 should apply to the $49 million Alex Jones was ordered to pay parents of a slain Sandy Hook boy in August postponed the showdown until late November.

The judge, Maya Guerra Gamble, who is in the middle of a trial in Austin, had halted testimony in that case for one day on Thursday to hear Jones’ cap argument. The judge received motions this week related to the cap that she could not review in time, however, and she postponed the hearing until Nov. 22, her clerk said.

That means Jones and two parents he defamed when he called the 2012 slaying of 26 first graders and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School “staged,” “synthetic,” “manufactured,” “a giant hoax,” and “completely fake with actors” will have to wait until November to see what damages Jones will have to pay in the first of three defamation trials involving Sandy Hook families.

The second trial in Connecticut that ended last week, which resulted in a headline-grabbing $965 million for 14 family members who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook massacre and an FBI agent who responded to the shooting scene, was the most complex of the three trials.

A third trial awaits in Texas where a jury will decide how much Jones must pay the parents of another slain Sandy Hook boy who Jones defamed.

In the first trial the parents argue that the Texas cap on damages does not apply to the $45 million punitive portion of their jury award, because the parents qualify as disabled individuals due to their severe emotional disturbance and are exempt from the cap.

Jones’ attorneys argue that the parents are attempting an 11th-hour stunt to exploit a loophole in the cap law, and that the parents never claimed they were disabled people during the trial.

Alex Jones