By Jack Queen
(Reuters) – Opening statements will begin on Tuesday in a Connecticut courtroom to determine how much conspiracy theorist Alex Jones must pay families of 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting victims for falsely claiming the massacre was a hoax, a month after a Texas jury awarded two parents $49.3 million in a similar case.
In the Connecticut case, 14 family members of Sandy Hook victims sued Jones, founder of the right-wing Infowars radio show and webcast, and Infowars parent Free Speech Systems LLC in 2018. They say they were harassed by Jones’ followers as he and other contributors to his Infowars site claimed for years that the shooting was “staged” with crisis actors who faked their loved ones’ deaths.
“He urged the audience to ‘investigate,’ knowing his audience would respond by cyberstalking, harassing, and threatening the plaintiffs,” the complaint says of Jones.
The trial in Connecticut state court is scheduled to last four weeks.
A judge issued a default judgment in the case in November after Jones failed to comply with court orders.
The Connecticut trial is solely to determine how much Jones and Free Speech Systems must pay for spreading falsehoods about the killing of 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Jones previously claimed the shooting was staged by the U.S. government as a pretext for seizing guns. He has since acknowledged that the shooting took place.
Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy in July. That would typically shield the company from lawsuits, but it agreed to face trial in August.
A jury in Austin, Texas, where Infowars is based, awarded two Sandy Hook parents $49.3 million in damages after a two-week trial in a similar case last month.
That award could be reduced substantially because most of it consists of non-economic damages intended to punish Jones for his conduct. Those are capped under Texas law, and an attorney for Jones has said that he will seek to reduce the verdict to $1.5 million.
Lawyers for the Texas parents assert that the cap doesn’t apply and are seeking the full amount.
The Sandy Hook gunman, Adam Lanza, used a Remington Bushmaster rifle during the massacre, which ended when he killed himself with the sound of approaching police sirens.
(Reporting by Jack Queen; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Mark Porter)
