Infowars founder Alex Jones lost another legal battle against families of Sandy Hook victims who sued him for repeatedly claiming the 2012 mass shooting was a hoax, WNPR reports.
The Texas Court of Appeals ordered Jones to pay all costs associated with an appeal he filed against Neil Helsin, whose 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis was among the 26 people killed in Newtown.
Heslin’s attorneys had filed a motion for contempt after Jones refused to release internal Infowars documents related to their Sandy Hook coverage. Heslin and other defendants earlier sued Jones for defamation after he claimed the parents of the children killed in the massacre were “crisis actors.”
Heslin hopes Jones will turn over documents:
“As soon as he filed his notice of appeal the case stopped. We never got the discovery, we never got the answers to our questions for deposition, we never got any documents,” Helin’s attorney Bill Ogden told WNPR. “They objected to everything and said the court doesn’t have this power.”
Ogden said he hopes the latest ruling will allow the lawsuit to move forward.
“We hope that the defense will stop trying to roadblock, just giving us the information and letting us get to the bottom of this,” Ogden said, “and getting this case closed, rather than trying to drag it out and making it as difficult as possible on these parents after what they’ve done to them.”
Jones faces additional suits:
“Jones currently has lawsuits filed against him by multiple families of Sandy Hook victims in Connecticut and Texas. Ogden, who represents Heslin with the Houston-based firm Farrar & Ball, said the costs of the appeal process could likely total thousands of dollars,” WNPR reported. “Based on some of the ‘sister suits’ in progress in Connecticut filed by other victims’ families, Ogden anticipates ‘tens of thousands of documents’ to be turned over in the discovery process if Jones complies. In the meantime, they plan to file a motion for sanctions against Jones for discovery abuse.”
