A bankruptcy judge has blocked a proposed settlement between the families of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting victims who sued conspiracy theorist Alex Jones over his false remarks about the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school.
On Wednesday, judge Christopher Lopez of the US bankruptcy court for the southern district of Texas said he was unable to approve the proposed settlement between the families and Jones’s bankruptcy trustee. Lopez claimed that their efforts to divide Jones’s assets exceeded his court’s authority.
The decision complicates a proposed sale of Jones’s Infowars platform, and could spur divisions between families who sued Jones and won nearly $1.3bn in Connecticut courts and those who won $50m in Texas courts. The two groups of families had proposed a settlement that would guarantee the Texas families a 25% share of Jones’s future payments to the Sandy Hook families, with the Connecticut families taking 75%.
Speaking in court on Wednesday, Lopez said: “At its core, this is something I can’t approve.”
Lopez said the families and Jones’s bankruptcy trustee could resolve the issue in state court or return with another settlement proposal, according to Courthouse News Service.
“What this debtor needs, and what these families need, is finality in bankruptcy so they can pursue their remedies in state court, which is where they started,” the outlet reported Lopez as saying.
Lopez said he blocked the settlement because the families were asking him to divide up assets of Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Jones’s website Infowars, which was dismissed from bankruptcy last June.
In statements prior to Lopez’s order, Jones bankruptcy lawyers, according to the Connecticut Post, said: “The actual goal of this settlement motion is to grab the dividend money before the appellate courts make a decision in the pending appeals, so that if the judgments are reversed there will be no way that Alex Jones may recoup those funds.”
Lawyers representing the Sandy Hook families said: “The proposed settlement explicitly does not impair Jones’s right to continue appealing the judgments rendered in the state court … The proposed settlement represents a major breakthrough in this case, resolving the allowed claim amounts of (Jones’) largest creditors – the Sandy Hook families – and paving the way for the trustee to begin making interim distributions.”
Lopez’s decision on Wednesday follows his decision last December to block the Onion, a parody news site, from buying Infowars, arguing that a bankruptcy auction did not result in the best possible bids.
Just days prior to Lopez’s ruling over the Onion’s auction in December, a Connecticut state appellate court upheld a $965m verdict from 2022 against Jones, who filed for personal bankruptcy that same year.
Following the 2012 shooting, which killed 20 children and six educators in Newton, Connecticut, Jones repeatedly told his followers that the tragedy was staged by “crisis actors” who were looking to enact stricter gun policies.
Article by:Source: Maya Yang and agencies
