Sandy Hook families said a Connecticut judge should impose “the highest possible punitive damages” for Alex Jones, suggesting by one calculation that could be as high as $2.75 trillion, Bloomberg News reported. The families said that additional damages are warranted on top of a nearly $1 billion jury award because Jones broke a state law barring the sale of products using false statements. They reached the trillion-dollar sum by multiplying the state law’s up-to $5,000 per-violation fine by the 550 million social media exposures Jones’s audience received on his Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accounts in the three years following a school shooting that claimed the lives of 20 first graders and six educators in 2012. It was the largest of several damage calculation options the families offered the judge for assessing further penalties. “The only appropriate punitive damages award in this case is the largest award within the court’s power,” the families’ lawyers said in the filing. “The defendants have acted willfully, maliciously, and evilly, in full knowledge of the harm they are causing people who had no means to fight back, except to bring this case.”
