Why can’t Alex Jones use bankruptcy to avoid paying $1.1 billion to Sandy Hook families?
A Texas judge determined Alex Jones cannot use bankruptcy protections to shield himself from defamation damages awarded to Sandy Hook families.
The controversial right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones cannot use bankruptcy to wiggle out of paying defamation damages for the “willful or malicious injury” he caused the families of 26 people massacred at Sandy Hook. The host of Infowars for years used his program to spread lies about the mass shooting in Connecticut that left 20 children between the ages of six and seven dead.
He falsely claimed that the 2012 massacre at the Sandy Hook elementary school was a hoax carried out by the government to confiscate guns and that the parents of the children who died were crisis actors. Courts in Connecticut and Texas found him liable for his slanderous accusations and ruled that he intentionally defamed the relatives of the children killed.
He was ordered to pay $1.5 billion in damages. US bankruptcy judge Christopher Lopez ruled on Thursday that he cannot use his personal bankruptcy to escape over $1.1 billion of those verdicts. However, other parts of the verdicts could possibly be discharged including $324 million awarded as punitive damages in attorney’s fees from the Connecticut case.
As well as, he will not be able to avoid paying damages yet to be awarded in at least one of the two other defamation trials that have not received a final judgement.
Why can’t Alex Jones use bankruptcy to avoid paying $1.1 billion to Sandy Hook families?
Judge Lopez said in his decision that as the damages result from “willful or malicious injury” caused by the debtor bankruptcy cannot be used to eliminate the debts and legal judgements. Jones filed for bankruptcy in December 2022 after the billion-dollar damages judgement was handed down.
This latest verdict does not apply to the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings for Free Speech Systems, Jones’ media company. Infowars filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July last year in the middle of the defamation lawsuit proceedings.
Jones has appealed the trial verdicts in both the Connecticut and Texas cases which are currently moving through each state’s courts. The resolutions in those could change the amounts that the Infowars host is obligated to pay to the families of the Sandy Hook mass shooting victims.