Lawyers for Sandy Hook families, who were recently awarded a billion dollar compensatory judgment against radio host Alex Jones, are now seeking the “highest possible“ amount in punitive damages in hopes to take Jones off the air forever.
The cartoonishly large amount, which supposedly factors in 550 million “social media exposures” that Infowars would have generated on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook in the three years following the mass shooting and multiplies it by $5,000, was reported by Bloomberg News Friday.
More from Bloomberg:
Sandy Hook families asked a Connecticut judge to order Alex Jones to pay $2.75 trillion in damages in addition to the almost $1 billion a jury awarded for defamation, claiming only “the highest possible punitive damages,” will stop the Infowars host from continuing to harm them.
The families said they’re entitled to the amount because Jones broke a state law barring the sale of products using false statements. They reached the sum by multiplying the state law’s $5,000 per-violation fine by the 550 million social media exposures Jones’s audience received on his Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accounts in the three years following a school shooting that claimed the lives of 20 first graders and six educators in 2012.
[…]
“Alex Jones perpetrates this attack for one reason: greed,” the families’ lawyers said in the filing Friday. “Alex Jones will never treat them like real people, because they are too valuable to him as targets. “
Reports on the latest astronomical sum – larger than the GDPs of most countries – come as a one billion dollar judgment was handed down against Jones earlier this month, despite Infowars filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Attorneys for Jones, who was found guilty by default in two Sandy Hook cases in Texas and Connecticut respectively – violating his right to a fair trial – have vowed to appeal the case.
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