Separate $1.4 billion Connecticut judgment against Jones stands
The Texas Third Court of Appeals on Friday unanimously reduced a $50 million judgment against Infowars founder Alex Jones to $1.5 million, ruling that two Sandy Hook parents did not present evidence sufficient to exceed the state’s per-plaintiff damages cap for defamation cases.
The ruling does not affect a separate $1.4 billion judgment against Jones in Connecticut, according to the Associated Press. Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, were found liable for damages in the underlying Texas case for falsely claiming that the 2012 Newtown school shooting was a hoax staged by the government to tighten gun laws, the AP reported.
Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the plaintiffs, are the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, who was among 20 children and six educators killed in the 2012 attack in Newtown, Connecticut. The appeals court found that Heslin and Lewis did not show that harassment they attributed to Jones’s hoax claims rose to a level that would permit damages above Texas’s $750,000 statutory cap for each plaintiff.
The unanimous opinion, also reported by The Guardian, reduces the original jury award to $1.5 million — the statutory maximum of $750,000 per plaintiff multiplied by two. The reduction applies only to the Texas judgment.
The Texas verdict, issued in 2022, marked the first time Jones was held financially liable for claiming that the massacre had been faked. Jones founded the right-wing platform Infowars and used it to promote false claims about the 2012 shooting, the AP reported.
The Connecticut judgment of $1.4 billion stems from a separate proceeding and remains in force, the AP reported. Friday’s Texas appellate ruling does not address the Connecticut case in any way.
The decision is a significant legal victory for Jones in the Texas case. The reduction reflects the statutory cap on damages the court found applicable to the plaintiffs’ claims, while leaving intact the underlying determination that Jones and Free Speech Systems owe damages for the harm caused by their false claims about the Newtown shooting.