from eu.statesman.com/… no link yet to the judgment, but more info
An Austin judge has issued default judgments against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, citing his pattern of bad faith in dealing with lawsuits by parents of two children killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary.
The rulings mean the lawsuits will proceed to a trial to determine how much money Jones and his InfoWars media system must pay the parents for defamation and emotional distress caused by broadcasts that called the school shooting a hoax.
It's no longer a matter of whether Jones writes a check to the parents, said Bill Ogden, a lawyer for the parents. "It's now how big a check is it going to be."
District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble said the rarely granted motion for a default judgment was appropriate because prior sanctions, including $150,000 in court-ordered penalties, failed to change Jones' behavior.
"In considering whether lesser remedies would be effective, this Court has also considered Defendants' general bad faith approach to litigation, Mr. Jones' public threats, and Mr. Jones' professed belief that these proceedings are 'show trials,'" Guerra Gamble wrote in three similar orders.
Ogden said he was thrilled at the result.
"It's been a long time coming for these parents, and we're happy the way it worked out," said Ogden, with the Farrar and Ball law firm in Houston.
Time’s up, jackass.
link edition.cnn.com/…
Jones falsely claimed that the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was a "giant hoax" carried out by crisis actors on behalf of people who oppose the Second Amendment.
The shooter killed 26 people at the school -- 20 of whom were young children -- before killing himself.
and
whines
Jones' attorney, Brad Reeves, declined to comment when reached by CNN on Thursday, but a
statementposted on Infowars from attorney Norm Pattis said the court's decisions were "stunning."
"It takes no account of the tens of thousands of documents produced by the defendants, the hours spent sitting for depositions and the various sworn statements filed in these cases," the statement said. "We are distressed by what we regard as a blatant abuse of discretion by the trial court. We are determined to see that these cases are heard on the merits."
Sincerely hoping this takes out the media network and his assets too, in full.
more links www.huffpost.com/…
The ruling — which is often referred to in Texas as a “death penalty sanction” for a party unwilling to comply with court orders — is a rarity in the legal world. Jones, who is now on his seventh lawyer in these cases, had years to provide documentation requested by the court, including internal company emails.
HuffPost was the first to report the start of Jones’ Sandy Hook legal woes in 2018 when parents Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa filed a defamation lawsuit related to Jones’ continued lies that the 2012 school shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead was a “false flag” hoax filled with “crisis actors.”
coverage in Vice: www.vice.com/...
A lawyer for Jones said last year that the Infowars host no longer believes that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax. But for the families, that acknowledgement has been too little, too late: In 2017, a Florida woman named Lucy Richards was sentenced to five months in prison after issuing a death threat to Pozner, and last year former Infowars contributor Wolfgang Halbig was arrested in Florida after tormenting Pozner over the course of several years, including emailing Pozner’s Social Security number and other information to “hundreds of people via email” and posting a TransUnion background report on Pozner online.
Edit:
also one document related to the judgment is here www.documentcloud.org/...