A U.S. bankruptcy judge ruled this Thursday that career conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder Alex Jones cannot use bankruptcy protections to avoid paying at least $1.1 billion in defamation damages to Sandy Hook families, Reuters reported.
Judge Christopher Lopez ruled that “willful or malicious injury” caused by the debtor does not fall under bankruptcy protections.
From Reuters:
Courts in Connecticut and Texas have already ruled that Jones intentionally defamed relatives of school children killed in the mass shooting, and they have ordered Jones to pay $1.5 billion in damages.
Lopez ruled that more than $1.1 billion of those verdicts, awarded for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, cannot be wiped away in bankruptcy. But he ruled that other parts of the verdicts, including $324 million in attorneys’ fees that were awarded as punitive damages in the Connecticut case, could possibly be discharged.
It was not clear whether those punitive damages were attributable to “willful” and “malicious” lies, or whether they could instead be attributed to merely “reckless” conduct, Lopez wrote. Lopez said he will hold a trial to sort out the precise amount of the damages that could be discharged.
Jones was sued by families of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting after Jones helped spread conspiracy theories that the massacre was a staged event that was carried out by crisis actors.
Read the full report at Reuters.
