Name: Alex Jones must pay legal fees for ’frivolous’ Sandy Hook appeal
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Alex Jones must pay legal fees for ’frivolous’ Sandy Hook appeal

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Jonathan Tilovejtilove@statesman.comView CommentsThe 3rd Court of Appeals on Wednesday denied conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ motion to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought against him by a Sandy Hook parent and ordered Jones to pay $22,500 in attorney fees for what the court found to be a frivolous appeal.That means that Jones has now been assessed nearly $150,000 in legal fees in two cases — one for defamation and another for intentional infliction of emotional distress — brought by Neil Heslin, whose 6-year-old son, Jesse Lewis, was one of the 20 first-graders killed along with six school staff members in the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Jones and others on his InfoWars conspiracy news site have portrayed the mass shooting as a hoax.Heslin’s lawsuit contends that a June 2017 report by InfoWars reporter Owen Shroyer — which claimed that Heslin could not have held his dead son in his arms as he has said — was based on a deceptively edited interview with a medical examiner and was intended to buttress the InfoWars narrative that the mass shooting was not what it appeared to be. Shroyer is also named in the suit.The other sanctions against Jones were imposed last year by state District Judge Scott Jenkins, who had denied motions by Jones’ attorney to dismiss the cases.“The latest ruling from the Texas Court of Appeals shows that InfoWars continues to waste everyone’s time with factual misrepresentations and frivolous arguments,” said Houston attorney Mark Bankston, who is representing Heslin and Sandy Hook parents in two other lawsuits against Jones and InfoWars.“It is rare to see a legal defense so incompetent and disrespectful to the rule of law that it causes a defendant to rack up $150,000 in fines during preliminary motions before even reaching trial,” Bankston said.But Austin attorney T. Wade Jefferies, Jones’ most recent lawyer on the case, replied by e-mail that he did not think the Appeals Court ruling would stand.“I completely disagree that the appeal was frivolous and believe the Texas Supreme Court will reverse the sanctions order and dismiss the case,” he said.“The Texas Supreme Court has taken an interest in the two previous cases in which the Court of Appeals upheld the trial court's dismissal of the defendants' motion to dismiss under the Texas Citizens Participation Act (the Texas anti-SLAPP statute) and have requested response briefing from the plaintiffs in those cases,” he said in his statement.The TCPA is the state law designed to protect against meritless lawsuits - SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation - intended to silence a defendant.“I fully expect that the Texas Supreme Court will take an interest in this opinion as well as it essentially guts the Texas Citizens Participation Act,” he said.Jefferies also said, “It is unusual that Justice (Gisela) Triana has been on all three Court of Appeals panels and has authored each opinion.”“The goal has always been to get these cases to the Texas Supreme Court as soon as possible,” Jefferies said.View Comments

Jonathan Tilovejtilove@statesman.comView CommentsThe 3rd Court of Appeals on Wednesday denied conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ motion to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought against him by a Sandy Hook parent and ordered Jones to pay $22,500 in attorney fees for what the court found to be a frivolous appeal.That means that Jones has now been assessed nearly $150,000 in legal fees in two cases — one for defamation and another for intentional infliction of emotional distress — brought by Neil Heslin, whose 6-year-old son, Jesse Lewis, was one of the 20 first-graders killed along with six...

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Jonathan Tilove

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Alex Jones must pay legal fees for ’frivolous’ Sandy Hook appeal

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