The Supreme Court has declined to review Alex Jones’ appeal, which sought to upend the $1.4 billion judgment that the Infowars host called “the largest in American libel history.” He was sued by victims’ relatives over his lies about the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
The denial came Tuesday in an order list containing actions in pending appeals. It takes four justices to grant review, and most petitions are denied.
In his failed petition, Jones said that the judgment “can never be paid” and that the litigation outcome is a “financial death penalty by fiat.” He said he couldn’t fairly defend himself, complaining that the Connecticut legal process lacked “meaningful appellate review” and featured “a punitive administrative Death Penalty Sanction for small discovery errors to impose liability, bypass burdens of proof, and award punitive damages.”
Jones argues that his First Amendment rights were given short shrift and that his statements were taken out of context. He said he had expressed “opinions of media excesses” when he used terms such as “hoax” and “staged,” which he said were “generally directed at the media circus, while often in the same broadcasts acknowledging that murders had in fact occurred.”
The plaintiffs in the case waived their right to file a brief opposing Jones’ petition at the high court, and the court didn’t request a response before denying his petition, suggesting no justices thought it worthy of further consideration. Jones separately filed an urgent application to halt collection of what he called the “record-breaking” $1,436,650,000 judgment. That separate application went to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who handles emergency litigation from the geographic area including Connecticut; she denied it Tuesday without explanation or referring it to the full court for consideration, suggesting she didn’t think it merited that full review. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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