The Supreme Court of Texas today declined a rehearing in a series of defamation lawsuits against the webcast InfoWars and host Alex Jones over the Sandy Hook school massacre and the Parkland school shooting.
Without comment, the court turned down requests in four lawsuits over the Sandy Hook shootings and a fifth complaint by a man who says he was misidentified as the gunman in the Parkland School shooting
“Now, we don’t have any real barriers in front of us and we can start conducting general discovery, which has been our goal since the onset of these cases.” said William Ogden, attorney for the plaintiffs in all five lawsuits. “We’ll have a conference with the judge and we’ll set up a discovery plan so that we can start requesting documents and taking depositions and developing the case so that we can get to trial as soon as possible.”
20 young students and six staff members were killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown CT in 2012 by Adam Lanza, who also murdered his mother before the shooting at the school. Lanza took his own life before he could be arrested.
Jones used his InfoWars webcast to declare the shooting a hoax that was aimed at giving the government a reason to limit gun rights.
Suits were filed by Neil Heslin, father of a six year old after Jones disputed Heslin’s claim tht he had held his dead son after the shooting, Scarlett Lewis who said Jones claimed the shooting was “as phony as a three dollar bill, and by the parents of 6-year-old Noah Pozner, who say Jones perpetuated the claim the that shooting was a hoax.
“They all stem from a five-year campaign by the InfoWars show to continue running this story claiming that this was some sort of crisis actor, fake news, something fishy, the children didn’t die.” Ogden said.
Jones has tried to get the suits dismissed, failing to convince the courts at every turn. A trial judge, then the Third Court of Appeals declined to stop the suits. In January, the Texas Supreme Court also refused. Today’s ruling was a request to reconsider the January ruling.
In a separate ruling the Court refused to reconsider a similar ruling in a claim filed over the 2018 shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida. 17 were killed and another 17 were wounded. Marcel Fontaine says InfoWars reporter Kit Daniels mistakenly identified him as the shooter. Police have arrested Nikolas Cruz as the gunman. His case has been delayed because of the pandemic.
Jones was initially part of the Fontaine suit, but was dismissed.
The cases will now be sent back to a District Court judge in Travis County, venue for the complaint because Jones the InfoWars show are based in Austin.
Attorneys for InfoWars and Jones have not returned calls.