AUSTIN (KXAN) — Attorneys representing the family of a Sandy Hook shooting victim are facing off with Infowars host Alex Jones’ attorneys again. This time, they’re asking the judge to sanction Jones’ legal team over what they call “false statements” in his motion for a new trial.
Last summer, a jury handed down a nearly $50 million judgement against Jones in the defamation and mental anguish case filed against him by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis — the parents of a 6-year-old who died in a shooting at the Connecticut elementary school in 2012.
They sued the well-known talk show host and conspiracy theorist over repeated assertions on his show that the shooting was fake. Both parents testified during the trial about years of personal harassment that followed.
In February, his legal team motioned for a new trial, asserting that the court’s previous sanctions against Jones’ attorneys interfered with his right to a fair and orderly trial. The motion cited other several arguments, including questions about the use of some videos and some witness testimony from the trial.
Jones’ attorneys have argued in the past that the entire trial violated his constitutional rights, because he was found liable in the case not by a jury, but in a default ruling from the judge because of his team’s “callous disregard” for court orders and refusal to produce documents and evidence in the case.
Neither the judge nor the family’s attorneys called for a hearing on the motion, which allowed it to be overruled automatically on a procedural basis.
Instead, the family’s attorneys called on the judge to issue new sanctions against Jones’ attorney for basing the motion on “groundless” and “frivolous” claims.
In a hearing Wednesday, Jones’ defense attorneys said they stand by the arguments they made in the motion for a new trial. Christopher Martin argued that these calls for sanctions about the motion, after the fact, were “unnecessary” and even “offensive.”
Because the motion for a new trial was overruled, his team was filing an appeal in Jones’ case, and he said the arguments made in the motion for a new trial were all made in good faith and could all be considered up on appeal.
“On appeal, it’s fair game, and I had every right to preserve that issue on appeal,” he told the judge. “I’m entitled to make the argument.”
In the hearing, attorney for the parents, Mark Bankston, pointed to dozens of typographical errors and what he asserted were nonsensical citations from the trial transcript, “riddled” throughout the new trial motion filed by Jones’ team. He called the document “a train wreck.”
At one point, Bankston asked Martin whether he thought it was appropriate to charge his client, Jones, for the work done to create the motion document, in light of the typos. Martin said he believed they already had.
Earlier in the day, Bankston put up a list of lawyers who had previously or were currently representing Jones — calling it a “revolving door.” While he acknowledged that Jones is entitled to representation, he accused them of treating it as a “free meal ticket.”
“We’ve seen them coming into this court. They show up, make a little money,” he said. “There’s a limited window in which you can hop on this train and get in on the Jones-gravy. A lot of lawyers have done that, both in the bankruptcy court and here.”
In the court filing on the sanctions and during the hearing, the family’s attorneys pointed back to ongoing bankruptcy proceedings over Jones’ business and personal assets– noting the lawyers will be paid for their work on the motion while dozens of creditors wait, including the families expecting money from judgements handed down against Jones.
Martin acknowledged for the court that piecing together the record of this case was “a nightmare,” given the complexity of the case and the amount of attorneys involved over the years.
However, he fired back against the claim they were cheating the bankruptcy court. Instead, he accused the family’s attorneys of “artificially” creating legal work, calling for sanctions as opposed to responding to the motion for a new trial.
“Because no hearing was ever held on the motion for a new trial, everything we are discussing is manufactured by opposing counsel to run up fees, to have another sanctions motion, to have another attack on Alex’s lawyers to try and go away and do something else,” he said. “I could file an outline and not be sanctioned. I could file bullet points — with no record cites, no argument, no references to argument heard in the trial — and not be sanctioned under Texas law.”
Judge Maya Guerra Gamble told Jones’ attorneys she read their full motion for a new trial, calling the document “sloppy and disingenuous, at best.” Still, she said she agreed with much of their argument today.
The judge told the court she would review both arguments Wednesday night and issue her order Thursday afternoon.
KXAN will update this story when more details become available.