The jury has delivered its verdict in Alex Jones’ Connecticut-based defamation trial, and it’ll make your eyes water.
Jones has been embroiled in a series of civil suits over his years-long campaign to proclaim the Sandy Hook massacre a hoax. Previously, he had already been ordered to pay hundreds of millions in damages to the families of the victims, and after a wild scene unfolded during this most recent trial, it was only a matter of time before he was hit with another fat bill.
Still, I didn’t expect it to be this bad, and I’m not sure anyone else did either. According to multiple news sources, Jones has been ordered to pay $965 million in compensatory damages to the families he defamed.
When it comes to this entire saga, I feel like I’ve been fair, and as I explained in a prior piece, it does look like Jones violated the plain letter of defamation law. But to the tune of nearly a billion dollars? That’s objectively insane, unprecedented, and completely unsupported by any logical calculation of damages that has ever been used in court before. I would also assume it’s a record when talking about a judgment against an individual person.
I saw a post earlier on social media where the largest fine paid by any executive after the 2008 financial collapse was $67 million. Is the idea here that these families, as horrible of a tragedy as they endured, were caused nearly a billion dollars in damage to their well-being? Isn’t the point of defamation law to make people hole for quantifiable harm done to them? This seems like a jump-the-shark moment for the court system, where the goal was to end Jones instead of just making him pay a fair amount.
And that’s really the goal here. That jury didn’t award $965 million because that makes sense. They awarded it because they want to bankrupt Jones and his outlet. In fact, Jen Psaki said the quiet part out loud on that.
I may not agree with Jones, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to rejoice at the court system being so blatantly abused. Compensatory damages have a legal definition. There is no way that nearly a billion dollars of damage, injury, or incurred loss was caused by Jones’ claims. What formula was even used to come up with that? Certainly not one that has ever been used before.
For that reason alone, I think this doesn’t survive appeal. Whatever court touches this next is likely to look at the verdict sideways because it’s just that far out there.