Punitives get $43.5 million slice in Alex Jones Texas defamation award

A Texas appeals court dropped the exemplary damages Jones would have to pay two parents down to just $750,000 each. An additional $4 million compensatory judgment still stands. AUSTIN (CN) — A three-judge panel of the Texas Third Court of Appeals Friday heavily cut the punitive defamation damages conspiracy theorist Alex Jones must pay two Texas parents whose son died in the Sandy Hook massacre, from over $45 million to $1.5 million. But two parents in Texas, Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son Jesse was among those killed, won a combined $49.3 million in damages in a separate verdict in Texas state court in 2022. A jury awarded Heslin and Lewis $2 million each in compensatory damages, plus prejudgment interest in August 2022, which will stand. But they were also awarded $20.5 million each in punitive damages, plus a further $4.2 million for Heslin. Friday’s order cuts those punitive, or exemplary, damages down to $750,000 each. The ruling doesn’t affect the $1.5 billion in damages Jones faces from a Connecticut lawsuit, where most of the families of the school shooting victims sued over his repeated claims the attack was a hoax. The opinion of the three-judge panel , signed by Chief Justice Darlene Byrne and joined by justices Chari L. Kelly and Maggie Ellis, upheld most of the findings related to Jones’ conduct during discovery, the defamation verdict and the compensatory damages, interest and attorney’s fees awarded to Heslin and Lewis. In a major blow to the two Texas parents, however, the panel found the lower court improperly allowed them to seek exemplary damages from Jones above the statutory $750,000 cap. Under most circumstances Texas law caps exemplary damages, extra damages awarded beyond the compensatory damages for a specific claim, at $750,000 per person. But one of the so-called “cap busting provisions” lays out an exception when an individual knowingly or intentionally commits a felony against a disabled individual. Byrne wrote the trial court judge improperly allowed the parents to amend their damages petition in late September 2022, more than a month after the jury’s verdict, to allow for an exception to award higher damages. The three-judge panel upheld the lower court’s findings that Jones’ conduct met the elements of defamation, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress. But, Byrne wrote, “the elements of cap-busting go beyond all these elements in requiring findings of injury to a disabled individual, which includes findings about the mental or emotional conditions of the plaintiffs as well as the effect of appellants’ actions on the plaintiffs’ mental condition.” Citing precedent, Byrne wrote: “The new allegations in the amendment were not merely a recasting of existing claims to conform with the evidence but were more like a new cause of action because the cap-busting statute requires findings that were not submitted to the jury.” Jones and his company have filed for bankruptcy in continuing legal proceedings. The satirical website The Onion also moved to take over Jones’ Infowars platforms. He gave up the Infowars brand in April and moved to a new location. Our weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.