A Texas court on Friday ruled that the $50 million in damages that Infowars founder Alex Jones was ordered to pay to the parents of a 6-year-old killed in the Sandy Hook shooting was too large a sum, lowering the judgment to $1.5 million.
In a unanimous decision, the Texas 3rd Court of Appeals ruled that the judgment exceeded the state’s $750,000 cap on damages per defendant, and that Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis did not prove that the harassment Jones fueled harmed them to the point that would entitle them to damages beyond the limit.
Heslin and Lewis’ son Jesse Lewis was one of 20 children and six adults who were killed in the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. Jones peddled conspiracy theories about the shooting for years afterward, calling the massacre a “hoax” and the grieving families “crisis actors.”
The couple sued Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, in 2018. Heslin testified during the trial that Jones’ false claims led to persistent harassment, and that Heslin’s home and car had been shot at. They were awarded a total of $50 million in damages.
The Friday ruling is a significant victory for Jones, but he is still on the hook for $1.4 billion in damages in a Connecticut lawsuit from Sandy Hook parents. Jones has called the judgment a “financial death penalty by fiat.” The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review his appeal in that case in October.
The Texas and Connecticut cases led Jones to file for bankruptcy. His website, Infowars, was taken over by The Onion, a satirical media outlet, earlier this year.
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