By JIM VERTUNO Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas court on Friday slashed a $50 million judgment to $1.5 million against Infowars founder Alex Jones after he falsely claimed the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school mass shooting was a hoax.
The ruling does not affect a $1.25 billion judgment against Jones in Connecticut, but is a legal victory for him after he and his company, Free Speech Systems, were found liable for damages for claiming the mass shooting didn’t happen.
Despite the multiple financial judgments against him in Connecticut and Texas, Jones has yet to make any payments as he appeals the amounts and the attempt to liquidate his company.
The unanimous opinion by the Texas Third Court of Appeals said Sandy Hook parents Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis did not show evidence that harassment inflamed by Jones’ hoax claims rose to a level that would allow them to exceed the state’s $750,000 cap on damages for each plaintiff.
The appeals court ruled that the trial court judge improperly allowed the parents to seek damages above the cap.
Heslin and Lewis’s 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis was among 20 children and six educators killed in the attack in Newtown, Connecticut. The lawsuit and the 2022 verdict against Jones marked the first time he was held financially liable for peddling lies about the massacre, claiming it was faked by the government to tighten gun laws.
Jones, who portrayed the lawsuit as an attack on his First Amendment rights, conceded during the trial that the attack was “100% real” and that he was wrong to have lied about it.
However, on his streaming show Friday, he called the Texas ruling “a gigantic victory for the First Amendment,” and said he will continue to appeal the case to the state Supreme Court to get the remaining damages thrown out.
“I got lawyers who are good constitutional lawyers and they are not backing down,” Jones said.
Mark Bankston, an attorney for Heslin and Lewis in Texas, shrugged off the appeals court ruling as “irrelevant” given that Jones still faces massive financial judgments.
“The families care not at all about this irrelevant ruling which affects only two of the 19 claims they all share. Jones still faces over a billion dollars of liability, so this changes absolutely nothing. All it does it highlight the absurdity of Texas law,” Bankston said.
Heslin and Lewis told jurors in the case that an apology wouldn’t suffice and called on them to make Jones pay for the years of suffering he has put them and other Sandy Hook families through.
At the Texas and Connecticut trials, victims’ relatives testified that Jones’ followers — believing his claims that the shooting didn’t happen — subjected them to death and rape threats, in-person harassment and abusive comments on social media. Jones argued there was no proof that linked him to those actions.
Jones’ trial attorney, Andino Reynal, had said immediately after the verdict that Jones would appeal the damages amount, and predicted it would be reduced to $1.5 million.
Jones and his company have filed for bankruptcy, and those legal proceedings continue. The satirical website The Onion also moved to take over Jones’ Infowars platforms and turn his bullhorn of conspiracy theories into parody sites.
Jones gave up the Infowars brand in April and moved to a new location, switching his shows to new websites and posting them on his personal X account. The Onion, meanwhile, has set up its own Infowars webpage on its website, running videos of shows parodying Jones.
Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families in the Connecticut lawsuit, said Friday’s ruling has no bearing on the ongoing lower court proceedings in Texas involving the liquidation of Infowars’ parent company.
___ Dave Collins contributed from Hartford, Connecticut.