Look who is back in court and is going to be paying big damages for his continual string of lies. His declaring bankruptcy for his media outlets while moving and hiding all the money as personal assets is no longer going to work.
Alex Jones Faces Paying Damages For Sandy Hook Claims After Defamation Case Returns To Court
https://www.unilad.co.uk/news/alex-jones-infowars-sandy-hook-bankruptcy-trial-defamation-20220521
The families of Sandy Hook victims are set to resume their lawsuit against Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for calling the 2012 Newtown school shooting a hoax, after a federal judge approved their case and referred them to a court in Austin, Texas.
Jones has already been found guilty of defamation and causing emotional distress to the parents of several Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims when he claimed the mass shooting, which took the lives of 20 children and six adults, was part of a hoax perpetrated by the government in order to restrict gun rights.
In an earlier hearing, Jones claimed he was suffering from 'a form of psychosis' when he made the remarks.
However, the trial was briefly put on hold earlier this year after Jones attempted to wriggle out of paying a settlement by declaring bankruptcy a week before a jury was set to convene how much he and his company were liable to pay in damages.
Jones filed bankruptcy charges for three of his media companies – Infowars, Prison Planet TV and IW Health – in order to claim protection from any damages.
However, this week a federal bankruptcy judge released Jones from bankruptcy protection and sent his defamation cases back to state court in Texas, where Infowars HQ is located.
The trial does not currently have a start date but is expected to resume next month.
“[We] are relieved but not surprised that Mr. Jones’ latest stunt has failed like all the others,” said Mark Bankston, an attorney representing four parents who won two defamation cases against Jones last year.
“Mr. Jones will now be held to account in a Travis County courtroom in the coming weeks, and these families will finally have the closure and recompense they deserve.”
Since the Sandy Hook cases went to court last year Jones has already paid over $10 million in legal fees and is reported to have lost at least $20 million, his representatives said in court.
However, despite these losses Jones did not file for bankruptcy protection himself because he feared doing so would damage his brand in the conspiracy theory market, his representatives claimed.
Attorneys for the Sandy Hook families have accused Jones of trying to hide millions of dollars in assets, after it was reported that he made over $76 million in 2019.
As well as the Austin hearing, Jones also faces a trial in Connecticut to determine how much money he must pay other Sandy Hook families for defamation, in addition to a previous case he lost in the same state where an FBI agent and eight families who lost loved ones in the massacre also won a defamation case against him in 2021.
Alex Jones gets spanked by the courts and will no longer use bankruptcy as a shield to prevent payment of his legal settlements. So sad for him. He's now gonna be broke -- and the damages are only increasing.
Infowars ends bid to use bankruptcy as shield
https://www.axios.com/2022/06/02/infowars-pulls-bid-to-use-bankruptcy-as-shield
Alex Jones’ gambit to use the bankruptcy court to shield himself from litigation damages has come to an end after less than two months.
Driving the news: The embattled right-wing talk show host and hawker of wellness supplements has withdrawn the bankruptcy petitions of three companies linked to his Infowars empire.
Why it matters: Jones tried to use a new subchapter of the U.S. code to his advantage, but in a way that it wasn't intended. It didn't work.
What they're saying: "From the beginning, it was clear that Alex Jones concocted this bankruptcy scheme to avoid facing the Sandy Hook families before a jury. The dismissal of this bankruptcy at this juncture only confirms it," Avi Moshenberg, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families, tells Axios.
The backstory: Jones was about to face a damages trial after being found liable for defamation in suits brought by families whose children were murdered in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.
- At issue: Jones repeatedly insisted the shooting was a hoax planned by gun-control advocates. His followers took to harassing the families.
- But Jones' legal strategy was different. If successful, it would have set a new precedent for how companies could wield the bankruptcy code against litigation foes.
- That enabled him to use a new subchapter of the code that's exclusively meant to help struggling small businesses reorganize.
- Using subchapter V could have allowed for a process in which the bankruptcy court decided on the damages amount, leaving creditors (i.e., Sandy Hook claimants) no choice but to accept the deal.
- In contrast, companies like Purdue and PG&E that have utilized the bankruptcy process to deal with sprawling litigation claims have not used subchapter V — so they ultimately had to come to a deal that claimants would vote to accept.
- The Sandy Hook families also took action: They decided to drop the bankrupt entities from their litigation — and as a result, they could continue to seek damages from Jones himself.
What's next: A damages trial will go forward in Connecticut state court in September, as the WSJ reports. Jones may face much higher penalties than the $10 million he offered in the bankruptcy deal.