Appeals court puts Pattis’ license suspension on hold

A state appeals court has ordered a stay on a judge’s order suspending the law license of Alex Jones lawyer Norm Pattis for sharing confidential medical records of Sandy Hook families.

The one sentence court decision, dated Thursday, states that the suspension is “stayed until final resolution” of the legal fight over his suspension.

Waterbury Judge Barbara Bellis, who presided over Jones’ trial in September, ordered Pattis’ law license suspended in a Jan. 5 ruling. The action rose out of a finding that Pattis’ office had sent confidential medical records from the Connecticut case to lawyers representing two parents who won a judgment against Jones in Texas.

“We cannot expect our system of justice or our attorneys to be perfect but we can expect fundamental fairness and decency,” Bellis wrote in the Jan. 5 court filing. “There was no fairness or decency in the treatment of the plaintiffs’ most sensitive and personal information, and no excuse for the respondent’s misconduct.”

Pattis has been a member of the Connecticut bar since 1993 and has no prior record of disciplinary action, according to the court filings

Thursday’s stay of that suspension represents a win for Pattis, a sometimes controversial figure known for representing polarizing clients. Along with representing Jones, a Texas fabulist who claimed for years that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax, Pattis is representing Joe Biggs, a member of the Proud Boys charged with seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol.

In an earlier court filing, Pattis attempted to have the law license suspension thrown out, arguing it reflected “a growing, and disturbing, trend among trial court judges of dispensing summary judgment against aggressive lawyers, a tendency that cannot help but undermine the adversarial system and create a more limpid inquisitorial regime.”

In October, Jones was ordered to pay around $1.5 billion to the families of Sandy Hook victims and an FBI agent after the trial. A judge had already found him liable by default in the lawsuit brought by the families in Connecticut, the trial was to determine the amount of damages he would owe.