Jury Orders Alex Jones to Pay $45.2 Million in Sandy Hook Case - The New York Times

AUSTIN, Texas — A Texas jury ordered the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Friday to pay the parents of a child killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting $45.2 million in punitive damages for spreading the lie that they helped stage the massacre.

The jury announced its decision a day after awarding the parents more than $4 million in compensatory damages and after testimony on Friday that Mr.

Jones and Free Speech Systems, the parent company of his misinformation-peddling media outlet, Infowars, were worth $135 million to $270 million.

Punitive damages are intended to punish especially harmful behavior and tend to be granted at the court’s discretion, and are sometimes many multiples of a compensatory award.

Ball had asked the jury for punitive damages of about $146 million, in addition to the $4 million in compensatory damages awarded on Thursday.

Jones will actually have to pay in punitive damages is certain to be the subject of further litigation.

Texas law caps punitive damages at two times the compensatory damages plus $750,000.

Alex Jones, a far-right conspiracy theorist, is the focus of a long-running legal battle waged by families of victims of a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.

Jones used his Infowars media company to spread lies about Sandy Hook, claiming that the attack in 2012, in which 20 first graders and six educators were killed, was a hoax.

Jones must pay the families of the Sandy Hook victims.

Jones put the Infowars parent company, Free Speech Systems, into Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, halting all pending litigation.

4, a jury in the Texas trial awarded the parents of one of the children killed in the mass shooting more than $4 million in compensatory damages, which are based on proven harm, loss or injury.

Jones must pay the parents $45.2 million in punitive damages, which aim to punish especially harmful behavior and tend to be granted at the court’s discretion.

Andino Reynal, said the punitive award would ultimately be reduced to $1.5 million.

In the Sandy Hook defamation cases, a trial for damages in another of the suits is scheduled to begin next month in Connecticut, but it could be delayed because of a bankruptcy filing last week by Free Speech Systems.

Since then, there has been a “nice healthy increase” in the company’s revenue, including from sales of survivalist merchandise and supplements, and it brought in nearly $65 million last year, he said.

Pettingill said.

In its bankruptcy filing, Free Speech Systems reported $14.3 million in assets as of May 31, with $1.9 million in net income and nearly $11 million in product sales.

Free Speech Systems also had nearly $79.2 million in debts, 68 percent of it in the form of a note to PQPR Holdings, an entity that names Mr.

Jones was ruled liable by default in the Sandy Hook cases, he began funneling $11,000 per day into PQPR, Mr.

Pettingill said.

Pettingill said he had managed to track nine private Jones-associated companies, but had to cobble together information in part because Mr.

Pettingill said.

Jones, said in his closing statement on Friday that “we didn’t get any evidence as to what Alex Jones actually has today, we didn’t get any of what F.S.S.

“I got to look into his eyes and I got to tell him the impact his actions had on me and my family and not just us — all the other Sandy Hook families, all the people that live in Sandy Hook and then the ripple effect that that had throughout the world,” she said