Jones filed the requests Friday, saying the choose’s pretrial rulings resulted in an unfair trial and “a substantial miscarriage of justice.”
HARTFORD, Conn. — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has requested a Connecticut choose to throw out an almost $1 billion verdict towards him and order a new trial in a lawsuit by Sandy Hook households, who say they have been subjected to harassment and threats from Jones’ lies in regards to the 2012 Newtown faculty taking pictures.
Jones filed the requests Friday, saying Judge Barbara Bellis’ pretrial rulings resulted in an unfair trial and “a substantial miscarriage of justice.”
“Additionally, the quantity of the compensatory damages award exceeds any rational relationship to the proof provided at trial,” Jones’ legal professionals, Norm Pattis and Kevin Smith, wrote within the movement.
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Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the 15 plaintiffs within the lawsuit towards Jones, declined to touch upon the submitting Saturday, however stated he and different attorneys for the Sandy Hook households can be submitting a quick opposing Jones’ request.
Twenty first graders and 6 educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School died within the assault on Dec. 14, 2012.
An FBI agent who responded to the taking pictures and family of eight youngsters and adults killed within the bloodbath sued Jones for defamation and infliction of emotional misery over his pushing the bogus narrative that the taking pictures was a hoax staged by “crisis actors” to impose extra gun management.
Six jurors in Waterbury, Connecticut, ordered Jones and his firm, Free Speech Systems, on Oct. 12 to pay $965 million in compensatory damages to the plaintiffs and stated punitive damages additionally needs to be awarded. Bellis has scheduled hearings for early subsequent month to find out the quantity of the punitive damages.
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During the trial, victims’ family stated in often-emotional testimony that they have been threatened and harassed for years by individuals who believed the lies informed on Jones’ present. Strangers confirmed up on the households’ properties to file them and confronted them in public. People hurled abusive feedback on social media. Relatives stated they acquired dying and rape threats.
The verdicts got here after one other jury in Texas in August ordered Jones and his firm to pay practically $50 million in damages to the mother and father of one other slain Sandy Hook baby. A 3rd trial over the hoax claims, involving two extra Sandy Hook mother and father, is anticipated to be held close to the top of the 12 months in Texas.
Jones, who has acknowledged lately that the taking pictures did happen, has blasted the lawsuits and trials on his Austin, Texas-based Infowars present, calling them unfair and a violation of his free speech rights.
But he misplaced his proper to current these defenses when the judges in Connecticut and Texas discovered him chargeable for damages by default with out trials, for what they known as Jones’ repeated failures to show over some proof together with monetary paperwork and web site analytics to the Sandy Hook legal professionals.
With legal responsibility already established, the trials in each states targeted solely on how a lot Jones ought to pay in damages.
Pattis, Jones’ lawyer, wrote within the motions filed Friday that there was a scarcity of proof straight connecting Jones with the individuals who harassed and threatened the Sandy Hook households. Pattis stated the trial resembled a “memorial service, not a trial.”
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“Yes, the families in this case suffered horribly as a result of the murder of their children,” Pattis wrote, including that Jones didn’t ship folks to harass and threaten the households.
“There was no competent evidence offered at this trial that he ever did,” he wrote. “Instead, there was a shocking abuse of a disciplinary default and its transformation into a series of half-truths that misled a jury and resulted in substantial injustice.”
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