Alex Jones Wins Appeal in Sandy Hook Case — Payment to Families Slashed from $50M to $1.5M

FILE – Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones takes the witness stand to testify at the Sandy Hook defamation damages trial at Connecticut Superior Court in Waterbury, Conn., Sept. 22, 2022. (Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP, Pool, File)

Far-right podcaster Alex Jones won an appeal in a Texas court that reduced his payment to the Sandy Hook families from $50 million to a stunning $1.5 million.

The appeals court ruled that Sandy Hook parents Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis “showed no evidence that harassment they endured from Jones flaming the conspiracy impaired them to the point that they’d be entitled to damages above the cap.”

The cap, as noted in a report from Bloomberg Law, is $750,000 per defendant.

The report from Bloomberg Law added:

The bigger judgment was improper because the judge let parents Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis move to exceed a $750,000 statutory cap on damages per defendant months after the 2022 jury trial, the court said.

“We conclude that the trial court abused its discretion by allowing the post-verdict amendment of the petition and, consequently, allowing the judgment to exceed the statutory cap on exemplary damages on grounds not pleaded or found by the jury,” the Court of Appeals, Third District said.

The reduced verdict marks Jones’ first victory cutting a pair of overwhelming judgments rendered after he and Free Speech Systems LLC, his media company, were sued for publicly claiming the shooting didn’t happen, calling parents liars and subjecting them to harassment.

The legal battle stems from Jones’ bizarre remarks about the December 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, in which shooter Adam Lanza walked into a Newtown, Connecticut elementary school and murdered 26 people — including 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7.

Jones later claimed the mass murder was a hoax and that the families of the victims were crisis actors, prompting them to sue the commentator.

During the trial, an expert told the court Heslin and Lewis — whose 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis was a first grader at Sandy Hook when he was killed — had feared unhinged followers who believed Jones could try to kill them.

Although he won the appeal in Texas, there’s still the matter of the $1.4 billion Jones was ordered to pay by a Connecticut court for the same false claim that the devastating shooting was a hoax.

The Supreme Court rejected his appeal of that payment in October.

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