Texas judge: Jones must pay $49.2M
Judge disregards state law that would’ve capped damages to Sandy Hook parents
A Texas judge sided with the parents of a slain Sandy Hook boy and against Alex Jones on Tuesday by disregarding a state law that caps punitive damages in lawsuits at $750,000 and giving the parents the full $49.2 million awarded by a jury in August.
“The law in Texas enforces this cap without looking at the facts behind the liability, and without looking at the jury verdict that … this person and this company has done something horrible,” said Travis County District Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble at the end of a daylong livestreamed hearing on Tuesday, referring to Jones and his parent company, Free Speech Systems. “For this reason, I am going to enter the full amount that the jury awarded in this case.”
Neil Heslin, the Sandy
Hook dad who was awarded $49 million in defamation damages along with the mother of his slain son, Scarlett Lewis, said he was pleased with the judge’s ruling but referred questions to his lead attorney in Texas, Mark Bankston.
“I truly believe that the number the jury came up with was the correct and proper number,” Bankston said after the judge signed the parents’ award Tuesday in court. “I am very glad that we are holding onto all of it.”
The victory for the Sandy Hook parents represents the first post-trial loss for Jones, whose attorneys are taking up after-trial battles in Connecticut and Texas to limit his losses after total defamation awards to Sandy Hook families of $1.48 billion.
In Waterbury, a state judge was reading arguments by eight Sandy Hook families who won a $965 million jury award against Jones in October about why the court should reject Jones’ request to invalidate the jury award because of its sheer size.
“Every indication, from the overwhelming evidence of catastrophic harm to the attentiveness of the jury, supports the conclusion that the jury discharged its obligations carefully, dutifully, and according to the court’s instructions,” reads a motion by the families’ attorneys in Connecticut filed on Monday. “All observations of the jury’s behavior indicate that it took its task extremely seriously. The jury paid dedicated and sober attention to the presentation of evidence and the Court’s reading of its instructions.”
Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis will hear arguments in early December about Jones’ request for a new trial and to invalidate the jury’s $965 million award, which Jones calls “a substantial miscarriage of justice.”
“The cumulative weight of the court’s ruling on pre-trial motions and its evidentiary rulings resulted in a complete abdication of the trial court’s role in assuring a fair trial,” Jones’ New Haven attorney Norm Pattis argued earlier this month.”
Bellis is the same judge who added onto Jones’ punishment in early November with a $473 million judgment in additional defamation damages — ordering Jones to pay the families’ $320,000 million attorney fees, and giving the FBI agent and 14 family members who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook massacre an additional $10 million in punitive damages.
In Texas on Tuesday, lawyers for the parents of the slain Sandy Hook boy started arguments by asking for sanctions against Jones’ lead Texas lawyer, Andino Reynal, for a “bad faith” bankruptcy filing days before the trial was to begin.
“The point of this bankruptcy was to stop the trial,” Bankston said. “It was done on the eve of the trial for a purpose.”
The Texas judge will rule on sanctions against Reynal at a later date. On the issue of the $750,000 cap, the parents’ attorneys argued 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.
The Texas judge was not
persuaded by Jones’ attorneys, who argued that the parents were 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.
The judge also scheduled the third Jones Sandy Hook
trial for late March in Texas, where a jury will decide how much Jones must pay the parents of another slain Sandy Hook boy who Jones defamed.