Sandy Hook parents in Texas want Alex Jones’ bankruptcies dismissed
NEWTOWN — Parents of two slain Sandy Hook boys and a Norwalk native who won defamation suits against Alex Jones in Texas have joined Newtown families who won a suit in Connecticut to urge a federal judge to dismiss Jones’ bankruptcy filings.
In court papers filed one day after attorneys for the Sandy Hook families in Connecticut asked a federal judge to dismiss Jones’ ‘bad faith’ bankruptcies, attorneys for four Sandy Hook parents and man falsely accused by of being the shooter in a Florida high school massacre filed their own motions to dismiss Jones’ bankruptcies, arguing, “the purpose of the bankruptcy code is to afford the honest but unfortunate debtor a fresh start, not to shield those who abuse the bankruptcy process in order to avoid paying their debts.”
“There are no honest debtors here, and there are certainly parties that are attempting to abuse the bankruptcy process,” wrote attorneys for defamation victims in Texas, where the first of three trials to award damages was set to begin Monday before Jones sought bankruptcy for three entities he controls. “The bankruptcy is nothing more than a transparent attempt to evade the impending jury trials and resulting judgments in both Texas and Connecticut, and avoid the need for transparency relating to Jones and Free Speech Systems’ ability to pay what they rightfully owe to their victims.”
Federal Judge Christopher Lopez has called all sides to a conference on Friday in Southern Texas Bankruptcy Court. It was not clear on
Thursday how soon Lopez would rule on the Sandy Hook families’ motions or how soon the judge would rule on Jones’ three bankruptcy cases, which the judge refused to sanction at the first bankruptcy hearing last week.
For Jones’ part, the emergency motions to dismiss his cases by Sandy Hook families don’t give him adequate time to respond, his lead attorney wrote to the judge this week.
“Here, the Connecticut (families) filed their emergency motion less than 72 hours before the time that they seek a hearing,” wrote Jones’ attorney Kyung Lee. “A hearing on the requested time frame does not comport with due process.”
Lee argued last week that bankruptcy is a fitting and proper venue for Jones, who has suffered financially since he called the 2012 shooting of 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School “staged,” “synthetic,” “manufactured,” “a giant hoax,” and “completely fake with actors.”
To date, Jones has spent $10 million in legal fees and has lost $20 million in product sales because of the defamation cases in Texas and Connecticut, Jones’ representatives said in court. Jones himself did not file for bankruptcy for fear it would damage his reputation in the conspiracy theory community and further hurt his ability to sell products to his listeners, his representatives added.
Jones has proposed using the bankruptcy system to set up a trust to fund defamation damages. Since two of his entities seeking Chapter 11 protection have no cash and the third entity has an income of only $38,000 per
month, Jones has proposed to fund the settlement trust himself, staring with $10 million.
Attorneys for the Sandy Hook parents in Texas argued that plan amounts to “nothing more than an impermissible litigation tactic establishing the debtors’ bad faith.”
“Had these (Jones-controlled entities) truly been interested in assuring payment in full of all claims, they could have allowed the state court proceedings to advance to trial, determine the total
pool of damages suffered by all of the victims, and then filed bankruptcy petitions if the judgment debtors’ assets were insufficient to satisfy the judgments,” the parents’ attorneys wrote. “Instead, Jones has orchestrated a bankruptcy proceeding designed to evade facing any jury, minimize damages, and limit any transparency into his finances and wherewithal to pay judgments against him and his companies.”