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Alex Jones must pay $1.1 billion of Sandy Hook damages despite bankruptcy - court

https://www.reuters.com/legal/alex-jones-cant-avoid-sandy-hook-verdicts-bankruptcy-judge-2023-10-19/

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones cannot use his personal bankruptcy to escape paying at least $1.1 billion in defamation damages stemming from his repeated lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, a U.S. bankruptcy judge ruled Thursday.

Alex Jones must pay $1.1 billion of Sandy Hook damages despite bankruptcy - court

168 comments

Son_of_dad

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They say this, yet he's still making and spending to the tune of 100k per month and the courts aren't doing anything about it. Rich people don't get to go broke like the rest of us, he's gonna keep living in a nice house and making millions and get away with not paying anyone, and the courts won't do shit

fiat_lux

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This is part of due process in doing something about it. Unfortunately it's a lot faster to commit crimes and get "creative" with moving money in not-quite-crimes-but-still-bullshit than it is to weigh up their legality and enforce appropriate penalties.

When a legal system relies heavily on precedent as guidance and technicalities can destroy a decision, and fixing that might take decades and destroy lives, you have to make sure it's good. Especially when this many people are watching.

Unfortunately you're very right that the slow speeds to ensure precision are easily and visibly exploited by scumlickers like Jones.

stolid_agnostic

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The good news is that he’s not nearly clever enough to actually hide assets. They will get tracked over time and seized.

aniki

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And day now

Nalivai

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The arc of the moral universe is long

aniki

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If it's longer then a human life, who the fuck cares? Kissinger is still alive and free.

pinkdrunkenelephants

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Then shorten it, if you care about justice. 🤷

Or not, because you only care about preserving a corrupt and broken system that destroys everyone's lives. Whatever.

Jaysyn

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His parents have most of them, I shit you not.

DogMuffins

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I can see why you would think this, but this is a very unusual case. Particularly so given the decision in this article.

You're dead right in that rich people don't go broke like the rest of us - because they have accountants and lawyers set up complex business structures so if something falls over they can just walk away (or drive away in their nice car to their nice house).

This article is pretty much saying that all that usual dance isn't going to work in this case - he still has to pay $1.1b.

Also, there's no law that prevents him from going on making money. That may not feel "right" or just but that dynamic is the same even for poor people. That said, at 100k per month it would take him 916 years to pay $1.1b soo... he might curtail his luxurious lifestyle, maybe not.

bcron

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In a perfect world he'd be appointed a conservator or guardian. He's not paying his debts and is somehow spending nearly 8000 a month on housekeeping (that's 2 people working nearly full time at 25 bucks an hour). Clearly incapable of making sound decisions

MiikCheque

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At what point does his bankruptcy and the law diverge, is where what need reevaluated

Skwerls

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Couldn't have happened to a more deserving "person". This isn't going to bring the kids back but at least it'll stop people from fucking harassing the parents decades later. Jones is mentally fucked up and he deserves to be locked up.

KneeTitts

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And yet I believe he still will not pay them a dime... just like if trump loses all his court cases in New York, I really believe he will just refuse to pay and force them to chase him around asking for that money for the rest of his life. Rich people never have to pay fines in the US, its all for show, they always find a way to get around everything.

frezik

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The victims will almost certainly not see the full $1.1B, or even anything close to that. Not because Jones will hole up his money and refuse to pay, but because Jones doesn't have the assets to cover it, and never will. With a judgement hanging over him, he will be unable to raise the capital necessary to ever pay it back--it takes money to make money, especially when you need to crack the billion dollar mark.

Jones himself is still fucked. Rich people get away with stuff because they hire good lawyers. Jones forgot that part of the plan.

cogman

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Jones hired good lawyers, then fired them, then hired more, then fired them, then hired more, then fired them... etc.

During the sandyhook trials he went through something like 30 lawyers. Often the parents lawyers interacted with a different set of lawyers basically on every deposition.

I have to imagine Jones's lawyers told him to STFU, which he never could do.

Jax

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You are aware that he doesn't have a choice whether he pays, right?

Court orders will be issued for his assets. You don't see rich people paying for their crimes because they get away with it. Successful scumbags don't put themselves in positions like this.

frezik

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Right. Successful scumbags have lawyers that are worth a damn, and make some kind of defense before the judge stops waiting and enters a default judgement. Jones already failed that part. The rest is inevitable.

OneWomanCreamTeam

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Successful scumbags listen to their lawyers every now and then BEFORE they get sued. At least then if they do get sued their asses are coverable.

Veneroso

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Yeah but the way he incorporated the business, his parents own most of the business interests, which is going to take a lot to claw back. It's really insidious.

thisbenzingring

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HAHA

Fuck you Alex Jones

nucleative

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That's... wild.

Aside from whatever you feel about this guy, he's fucked. It might take some time but the victims will start to get court orders to seize his assets, which they can then present to banks, police, and other authorities, who will then turn them over directly.

The USA has it's fingers in almost every financial network in the world and Alex Jones can no longer be safe anywhere except basically crypto, bad actor countries, and I guess cash in his mattress. For the rest of his life. And he can't escape it with bankruptcy.

He'll be better off trying to get citizenship in Russia or China or something and never coming back.

hydrospanner

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Good.

SuperJetShoes

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Yep, good. Look at the damage he did. He'll have sufficient funds to have food and shelter. Anything beyond that he does not deserve.

How much divisiveness did he cause?
How many screaming arguments?
How many families did he break up?
How many bar room fights?
How much pain for grieving parents?

Fuck him, he's a cunt.

MartinXYZ

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He'll have sufficient funds to have food and shelter. Anything beyond that he does not deserve.

According to other comments here, referring to OJ's case, this is not likely to happen.

SuperJetShoes

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OK, point taken. He'll have sufficient funds to live a comfortable life (which is disgraceful for a bankrupt individual). But at least there's the satisfaction in knowing he won't get it all.

Apologies for the misunderstanding. I'm from the UK where it's tougher to game the bankruptcy laws and you need to lie before court.

Edit: typos

westyvw

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You would think he would pay, but look at OJ. Verdict to pay 30 million, and after all these years he only did 130,000.

Getting assets seized and wages garnished is not as easy as you would think.

nucleative

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Yeah that'strue. From what little I know OJ is allowed to make/keep enough so that he's far from destitute, but he sure hasn't don't anything redeeming since.

I guess if you know your work would lead to money that you can't keep, you'd choose to just not work.

yote_zip

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I'm not really in the loop on this but can someone ELI5 why Alex Jones is the only one that's being forced to pay money for the shit that comes out of his mouth? It seems like everyone else is doing whatever they want with no repercussions.

fiat_lux

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He made very specific defamatory statements accusing fellow citizens / parents of murdered children of participating in a government conspiracy and those people were able to prove they experienced harm as a consequence of his words.

The plaintiffs also had enough financial backing from (understandably horrified) strangers, and a high enough chance of winning for lawyers to want to represent them. Those factors allowed the plaintiffs to survive the legal system long enough to get a ruling, and the severity of the situation maintained their motivation to keep pushing for it instead of accepting settlement so they could somewhat move on with their lives.

Sometimes, the planets align to create the trifecta of enough energy, money, and evidence to force the justice system into enforcing justice. And I am grateful that can sometimes still happen, as rare as it feels.

Empricorn

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I prefer to think thusly:

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

---Martin Luther King, Jr.

But I can certainly understand people's pessimism, looking at the world around us...

fiat_lux

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That's fair, I'm not a flat-bow conspiracy theorist, even if the curve looks real flat right now from down here.

balderdash9

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I wonder if MLK ever read Hegel. I know he got a doctorate so it's not outside the realm of possibility.

eestileib

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Nothing's been enforced though. Jones is proceeding with his life pretty much unchanged.

stolid_agnostic

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Because it’s still in process. This stuff goes slow but he will lose everything.

qdJzXuisAndVQb2

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I'm not holding my breath. Rich people do not play under the same rules as normal people. Bankrupt me and I'm on the street. Bankrupt rich dudes and somehow they still have lawyers, nice clothes and roofs over their heads that they own.

Stumblinbear

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Depends on which chapter of bankruptcy, which all entail wildly different things. There's bankruptcy that effectively eliminates debt and others which force you and your debtors to come to the bargaining table to restructure your payment plan or they get nothing since you could just file for actual bankruptcy

The difference is if you can afford to pay for the lawyers necessary to create that restructuring or if there's any trust at all that you can pay it off eventually without getting yourself deeper in debt

psycho_driver

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Jones isn't important enough to the machine that they'll expend any energy or resources sheltering him. I bet this does get him in the end.

FlowVoid

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You forgot the fourth element of this trifecta: Alex Jones and/or his lawyers were too stupid to show up to court and defend themselves, so Jones automatically lost a defamation lawsuit without anyone even proving that Jones lied.

Wow, you might be thinking, that's great for these plaintiffs but surely nobody else would be dumb enough to ignore a defamation lawsuit and thus instantly lose! Well, let me introduce you to a certain Donald J Trump....

FlowVoid

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Alex Jones and/or his lawyers were too stupid to show up to court and defend themselves, so Jones automatically lost a defamation lawsuit without anyone even proving that Jones lied.

DocMcStuffin

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Yeah, his lawyers were super incompetent. They pretty much proved to everyone he was lying.

Damaging Alex Jones texts mistakenly sent to Sandy Hook family’s lawyers

Attorneys for the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones “messed up” and sent to his legal adversaries “every text message” he had written in the past two years – contradicting claims Jones had nothing on his phone pertaining to the deadly Sandy Hook school shooting, which he long maintained was a hoax, it was revealed at his defamation trial on Wednesday.

meco03211

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It went even further than just sending the messages. Jones' attorneys sending those could maybe have been a mistake. Had opposing counsel just gone and used them it could have bogged the whole process down horrifically. They'd likely appeal and fight that hard. So opposing counsel did the ethical thing and informed Jones' attorneys multiple times seeking clarification and basically covering their own ass a bit. Jones' attorneys didn't respond. They could have said "that was a mistake and privileged so you can't use them", but they didn't. Jones first found out in court while being cross examined. It was hilarious.

Default_Defect

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The video I saw of the lawyer telling AJ in court that he had all that and his lawyer did fuck-all to fix it is FANTASTIC.

Edit - Its in the link! WATCH IT

FlyingSquid

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I saw it live and laughed my ass off.

frezik

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I loved the legal commentary around it that Perry Mason moments don't happen, except this time, it did.

charles

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I think they were afraid of discovery revealing even more malicious information than what's being assumed.

ZeroCool

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After listening to all of the Knowledge Fight podcast's 70+ hours worth of coverage of both cases (including multiple interviews with the plaintiffs lawyers)... I don't believe for a minute that Alex Jones' lawyers are competent enough to attempt a devious strategy.

willworkforicecream

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Fun fact: they actually just fined Alex $1 for each time he said "I don't remember" or "I don't recall that" during the depositions and that's how it got up to over a billion.

SandbagTiara2816

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And Dan testified for the plaintiffs as an expert witness! Pretty incredible

a_queer_one

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Minor correction, Dan didn't testify. He was present for some of the depositions of Alex in the TX case, being there to help guide Mark Bankston's questioning. Mostly mentioning cause Dan was pretty clear he didn't want to actually testify

SandbagTiara2816

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Oops, you are right! Thanks for catching that

GlendatheGayWitch

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Only for his lawyers to send the prosecutors a copy of every text message that he sent and received for the last 2 years. Haha

frezik

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There's a proto-fascist idea out there that authoritarians can find all the best people and put them in positions to do their best work. What actually happens is that they select people for personal loyalty first and competence a distant second. This is why Trump and Jones have such shit people on their legal teams.

Mago

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You literally described Putin aswell lmao

circuscritic

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On top of everything else, his idiot lawyer accidentally emailed ALL of the discovery evidence that they had claimed didn't exist TO THE PLAINTIFF'S ATTORNEY. As well as no showing and getting a summary judgement.

There is so much stupid in that trial, you really should go find a legal YouTuber who documented the various levels of idiocy and just watch in amazement.

I'd recommend LegalEagle.

andros_rex

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Honestly, just watch the straight trial footage. It’s entertaining enough on its own.

520

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Alex Jones got himself into this position via a trifecta of pure stupid.

First of all, he made claims that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax. This turned public opinion against him severely, because Sandy Hook was a lines-crossed kind of event. Although school shootings are common in America, these tended to happen in colleges and high schools. Sandy Hook was an elementary school, meaning the victims were much younger

Secondly, he called the victims of the aforementioned shooting 'crisis actors', people who are paid to portray victims during emergency drills. These lies by Jones directly led to harassment campaigns against families that were already grieving the loss and extremely violent deaths of their very young children. This also got national attention, and many people pitched into the responding lawsuits raised by the grieving families against Jones's media company.

Thirdly, and perhaps a big reason why the punishment is so severe, Jones treated court hearings and depositions as optional, and skipped a huge amount of them. He didn't even seriously attempt to defend himself in a court of law, and when he did try, his lawyers were either idiots or actively working against him, leaking text messages (EDIT: and emails) that contradicted his own testimony. This led to a lot of default and highly punitive judgements against him.

stolid_agnostic

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To the third point, if they had done the minimum, they were more or less fine. The burden lied with the plaintiffs. He handed them a default judgement dream.

andros_rex

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He also platformed several “journalists” who were actively harassing the Sandy Hook families, repeatedly claimed one of the parents was autistic, and during the trial shared a photoshop of the judge as a demon or something. He was bragging the entire time that he was “bankrupt” and they wouldn’t see a dime, while his series of weird shell corporations (lots of money hidden with his parents) was unfolded before the court.

He was in Hawaii like two months ago on vacation/looking for Zuckerberg’s secret hideout lol.

fodderoh

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I hear ya. There are at least some other recent examples. The settlement between Fox News and Dominion. Giuliani is being held to account for libeling the Georgia poll workers. And of course all the Trump cases. But yeah, feels like a drop in the ocean.

theneverfox

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Because most public figures leave themselves some wiggle room.

Like "just asking questions" or being careful to qualify their statements.

"Some people are saying that Sandy Hook was a fabrication, and I think they make a pretty convincing case. Are the parents hiding something?" vs "these parents of so called victims are lying, they're actors hired by the government to take away our guns"

Plus I think Alex Jones included some calls to action that led to harassment of these grieving families - he didn't leave himself any way to wiggle out of it. Especially since his exposed communications made it obvious he had no valid basis to assert he believed it , and he showed contempt for the legal process

Fedizen

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most of these dorks settle to avoid discovery, alex jones basically thinks rules don't apply to him.

psycho_driver

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Because Jones is a fat sausage greaseball who was just a useful idiot. His usefulness has run its course.

FlyingSquid

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Don't pretend Jones was just an innocent victim in all of this. He wasn't used. He knew what he was doing. That's why he's made so much money off of it.

FlyingSquid

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AngryCommieKender

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I heard this picture as the "failure sound" on The Price is Right.

psycho_driver

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Time to start freezing assets and looking for what he's got offshore (and in Russia).

BeautifulMind

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Well since the USA has brought back debtor prisons anyhow, I know someone that ought to be in one

Razgriz18

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Dude, what the fuck. How morally bankrupt is the US?

Mirshe

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Think of the lowest point you can imagine and still have a functioning society. Realize there's at least a solid third that want to go lower than that.

singron

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Debtors prisons are still illegal and don't exist in the US. It's all explained in the article, but the issue is really that poor people have bad legal representation, local judges aren't all great, and private debt collection is out of control.

In the US, your creditors should generally only be able to garnish your wages up to legal maximums. You can't get prison sentences in civil trials.

Arrests are a last-resort way for a court to force someone to appear. The other jail time is basically contempt of court for failing to comply with court orders. These should probably exist in general, but they are likely misapplied for the above reasons in these cases.

Write to you representatives about the above stuff, not debtors prisons, since they won't know what you are talking about.

pinkdrunkenelephants

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How is that constitutional?

EDIT: The U.S. government needs to be overthrown so bad 🤦

technicalogical

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That article is about state governments. Overthrowing the federal government probably won't be the best course of action.

pinkdrunkenelephants

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Overthrowing any state or local government would require taking on and overthrowing the feds by the nature of the hierarchy.

Jaysyn

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I love this for him.

fne8w2ah

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Sammy

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I was once told by a wise man, “Jar-jar Binks has a Caribbean, black accent”.

This is what the “loser little, lil titty baby” deserves. Only a shame it’s arriving so late.

Smokeless7048

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A fellow policy wonk, I see.

Nalivai

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Hi, Andy in Kansas, I love you

SkybreakerEngineer

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My neck is freakishly large

Rmcc73

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"I love you"

gravitas_deficiency

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Couldn’t have happened to a better guy, honestly

Rally

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Good

merthyr1831

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So how does paying these fines work? Does he give a percentage of his earnings or what?

ChefTyler1980

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Creative accounting will show him making $0/year until his death

Skates

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If this ends up being met with creative accounting, I'd be happy for the courts to answer with creative torture.

ChefTyler1980

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Yeah, no, that’s not how the system is rigged unfortunately.

PoliticalAgitator

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I think it's extremely unlikely he'll earn a billion dollars before he drops dead of an aneurysm in the middle of a far right screed.

It's a thousand million dollars and it's been years since they needed him to funnel unmedicated schizophrenics into political extremism.

merthyr1831

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Yeah I know the number is kinda for show. It's more to keep him laying indefinitely. Only question is how he even pays the fraction he'll be able to pay in his lifetime.

Fades

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Forced selling off of assets?

bob_wiley

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Permanently Deleted

merthyr1831

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sure but would that stop the courts taking as much as possible? that's my question really because we all know AJ will never pay off a billion dollars, but he might be forced to pay off a few million.

Meowoem

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No but he's got many millions in assets so take all those

Skates

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Idk we can start with the kidneys.

Ejh3k

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Good

Knusper

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Yeah, schadenfreude aside, I'm glad that someone doing obviously criminal shit is seeing repercussions. The guy could have worked a normal job, done normal journalism. Instead, he decided that spreading hateful misinformation is a business model. This punishment makes it not a business model.

eestileib

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Very much TBD on that one, I don't think he has paid a dime or changed his lifestyle at all. His show is the same and he's still raking it in.

Mago

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Now i understand why he is appearing on russian propaganda shows, perhaps trying to pull a Snowden?

downpunxx

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Nothing matters until they find him guilty of contempt of court in not paying his judgements, everything else is just wasting time

orcrist

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Well no. It's the step after that, when they actually seize his assets, that's when you finally got to the point where things change.

Mac

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Still waiting

lntl

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so should I buy Super Male Vitality drops to support Sandy Hook victims?

formergijoe

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Only if you like Pb in your supplements. And I mean lead, not peanut butter.

RalphWolf

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How is this not all over the news?

crystalmerchant

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How? where's the money?

Xatolos

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If I'm reading it correctly, he's trying to play around with bankruptcy laws.

He's declaring himself as an individual as being bankrupt which would absolve him of having to pay these fees, meaning he owes pretty much nothing. But then he was hoping to shield his ownership of InfoWars from that bankruptcy (which he declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy), which as last month seems to be "footing" his bills to at least $93,000 a month. So he'd owe nothing, but still keep his everything.