Cases can move forward against Alex Jones regarding the nearly $1.5 billion he’s ordered to pay families of Sandy Hook victims over his conspiracy theories about the 2012 school massacre, a federal bankruptcy judge ruled Monday, but the families can’t yet pursue collection efforts against the Infowars host, the Associated Press reported. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez approved an order that attorneys for Jones, his media company and the Sandy Hook families had all agreed to. The order lifts a stay that automatically halted the cases when Jones filed for bankruptcy. Free Speech Systems, Jones’ media company, is also seeking bankruptcy protection. Judge Lopez approved the order, which prevents the families from pursuing collection efforts, during an hour and a half long hearing that Jones attended remotely. Jones filed for chapter 11 personal bankruptcy protection earlier this month in Texas, citing $1 billion to $10 billion in liabilities and $1 million to $10 million in assets. For years, Jones described the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre as a hoax. A Connecticut jury in October awarded victims’ families $965 million in compensatory damages, and a judge later tacked on another $473 million in punitive damages. Earlier in the year, a Texas jury awarded the parents of a child killed in the shooting $49 million in damages. Read more.
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Monday asked a judge to allow him to take a $1.3 million annual salary from the bankrupt parent company of his Infowars' website, Reuters reported. Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems LLC, both went bankrupt in recent months as they owe families of the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting a total of $1.5 billion in damages for falsely claiming the massacre was a hoax. Jones has said he cannot pay those judgments, which came after back-to-back defamation trials in Texas and Connecticut. Jones drew a $1.3 million salary from Free Speech Systems before its bankruptcy, and his attorney asked Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez to restore his salary to that level at a hearing yesterday. Jones has been paid a reduced biweekly salary of $20,000 since his company filed for bankruptcy on July 29, just over a third of what he had been paid before, according to his court filing. Read more.
