Public Justice Announces Winners for 2023 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award
Public Justice’s 2023 Trial Lawyer of the Year award was awarded to an incredible group of attorneys who held accountable conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for the lies he spread in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.
This year’s award was presented to “The Cases Against Alex Jones and his Companies: Neil Heslin & Scarlet Lewis v. Alex Jones, et al.; Leonard Pozner & Veronique De La Rosa, v. Alex Jones, et al. ; Lafferty, et al. v. Alex Jones, et al.” during Public Justice’s Annual Gala & Awards Presentation, held the evening of Monday, July 17 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The other finalists for the award were Hill v. Ford Motor Co. and Kamuda v. Sterigenics, et al. Read about the accomplishments of all the finalists here.
The Cases Against Alex Jones and his Companies: Neil Heslin & Scarlet Lewis v. Alex Jones, et al.; Leonard Pozner & Veronique De La Rosa, v. Alex Jones, et al. ; Lafferty, et al. v. Alex Jones, et al.
For more than a decade, internet “newsman” and e-commerce mogul Alex Jones led an assault on families who lost someone in the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting – especially those families who grieved or spoke in any public forum. Jones attacked these families by spreading lies to his millions of followers that the nation’s deadliest school shooting was a hoax, and that families were actors perpetrating a massive fraud on the American public.
In parallel efforts to hold Jones accountable, the Farrar & Ball team in Texas brought suit against Jones on behalf of the parents of two murdered first-graders, and the Koskoff team in Connecticut brought suit against Jones on behalf of seven families and one first responder.
Neil Heslin & Scarlett Lewis v. Alex Jones, et al.; Leonard Pozner & Veronique De La Rosa, v. Alex Jones, et al.
The first defamation cases against Jones and his company InfoWars were brought in Texas in the Spring of 2018 by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, parents of victim Jesse Lewis, and Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, parents of victim Noah Pozner.
Following multiple appeals, refusal by the defendants to comply with either rules or court orders, over a million dollars in sanctions awards, and even a fraudulent last-minute bankruptcy filing – which delayed the proceedings for another four months – the Heslin/Lewis case was set as the first trial against Jones after four years of litigation.
The jury delivered a verdict on August 4, 2022, awarding Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis a total of $49.3 million, including punitive damages for the suffering Jones put them through. This case marks the first time Jones has been held financially liable for the lies he spread about the massacre.
Lafferty, et al. v. Alex Jones, et al.
In Lafferty, et al. v. Alex Jones, et al., fourteen family members and one first responder, sued Jones in the fall of 2018, asserting claims of defamation, infliction of emotional distress, and a claim violation of the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act targeting Jones’ lie-based marketing scheme.
For five years, Jones resisted discovery, just as he had done in Texas. He refused to produce information, doctored documents, bullied witnesses, and at one point went on air and asked his audience for the head of plaintiffs’ counsel Chris Mattei “on a pike.” Even after the Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed the resulting sanction, Jones continued his relentless abuse of the judicial process. A default was entered and a two-month trial followed.
Although Jones had withheld extensive vital information, the trial team was able to show how Jones’ false claims about Sandy Hook drew increased traffic to Infowars.com, spiking sales in Jones’ e-commerce business, and establishing for the jury how Jones’ profit-motives drove his lies about the families. The trial team was also able to use Jones’ own social media and other data to show that his lies had a minimum reach of 550,000,000 impressions.
Each of the fifteen plaintiffs testified, acts of tremendous courage as Jones continued targetting the plaintiffs – and the trial judge – during trial.
The jury awarded the plaintiffs a historic $965 million in compensatory damages and the trial court then added punitive damages, bringing the total damages assessed to $1.4 billion, the largest verdict in Connecticut history and the largest defamation verdict in United States history. This verdict sent a message to Jones and his followers that there are real, financial consequences for using public platforms to target vulnerable people and promote tragedies for profit.
After the Lafferty trial, Jones still faced an additional trial in Texas involving parents Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, as well as a trial involving Marcel Fontane, a young man falsely identified by InfoWars as the 2018 Parkland High School shooter. Unable to continue, Jones and InfoWars both declared bankruptcy in late 2022, where a federal judge will oversee the process by which Jones is finally held accountable to these families.
No result in court can undo the harm Jones has done.
The results in these cases are a testament to the generosity and bravery of these families, who, even after all they had lost, were willing to face terrifying and powerful opponents to protect other families from what they had suffered.
Neil Heslin & Scarlet Lewis v. Alex Jones, et al.; Leonard Pozner & Veronique De La Rosa, v. Alex Jones, et al. legal team: Kyle Farrar, Wes Ball, Mark Bankston, and Bill Ogden of Farrar & Ball, LLP
Lafferty, et al. v. Alex Jones, et al. legal team: Christopher M. Mattei, Joshua D. Koskoff, Alinor C. Sterling, Matt Blumenthal, Sarah Steinfeld, Colin Antaya, and Lorena Thompson of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, PC.
