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The judge found him guilty of withholding evidence and did a summary judgement of guilty, and moved to the damages portion with a jury. Which is strange, skipp

The judge found him guilty of withholding evidence and did a summary judgement of guilty, and moved to the damages portion with a jury. Which is strange, skipping over the evidence trial and going straight to damages. They didnt say what the evidence being withheld was, and no video evidence against him. Thats what would have been interesting to see, the videos the case was based on. Banes Law did a good comment on the case @ https://files.catbox.moe/rsy84f.mp4 https://files.catbox.moe/rsy84f.mp4

dragonwriter 4y ago
> Which is strange, skipping over the trial and going straight to damages. Well, its unusual for a party with a business and sizable assets to protect to do the kinds of things that lead to default judgement, since that's pretty easy to avoid and potentially costly. But it's not unusual for a court to find default when parties steadfastly refuse to cooperate with court process, and Jones has had default rulings against him in two other Sandy Hook defamation cases. Which looks a lot like he was afraid that discovery would reveal something much worse than what was at issue in those cases.
- jcranmer 4y ago
  > Which looks a lot like he was afraid that discovery would reveal something much worse than what was at issue in those cases. And the great irony is that, because of his lawyer's mistake, he has lost the ability to keep from discovery an awful lot of things, so that revelation is likely to happen anyways.
notahacker 4y ago
It's not at all strange to skip over the evidence trial if one party consistently refuses to participate in the process of providing the evidence. Jones' lawyer accidentally sending the material he falsely claimed he didn't have after some months after he had been found guilty by default wasn't exculpatory...
nneonneo 4y ago
These are not summary judgments, they are default judgments. Alex Jones repeatedly failed to comply with court orders to produce evidence, which resulted in him being in default of the court. IANAL, but FRCP rule 37(b)(2)(A)(vi) very clearly indicates that a default judgment "against the disobedient party" is a permissible outcome of "[failing] to obey an order to provide or permit discovery". Essentially, Jones was found in contempt of court, and the judge slapped him with a default judgment. It's not strange at all.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > but FRCP rule 37(b)(2)(A)(vi) very clearly indicates that a default judgment "against the disobedient party" is a permissible outcome of "[failing] to obey an order to provide or permit discovery Nitpick: this is a state case and the Federal Rules don't apply, but I think most US jurisdictions have very broadly similar default rules.
  - nneonneo 4y ago
    Thanks for the clarification! The equivalent rule in the Texas RCP is 215.2(b)(5), "If a party or an officer, director, or managing agent of a party...fails to comply with proper discovery requests...the court in which the action is pending may, after notice and hearing...[render] a judgment by default against the disobedient party".
callmeal 4y ago
That's actually a pretty bad comment - they commentators have no idea what they're talking about, and one of them even says "... assume it's the same under the US law" and goes on to disrepect the " ... judge, whatever her name is". Really, is this what you consider a "good comment"?
omnicognate 4y ago
The two people in that "Barnes Law" video engage in an extremely dishonest form of argument. According to them, the fact that somebody cannot name the specific evidence Jones' lawyers were ordered to produce in discovery somehow negates any views they might hold on the case, including that the default (not summary) judgement was fair. It's a cheap rhetorical trick for use when one has no better argument: come up with some detail one's opponent doesn't have to hand and attempt to claim that because they can't immediately answer that specific question they must therefore be wrong about everything. The use of this form of argument is in itself a strong indicator of bad faith. IANAL, but with a bit of Googling I found one of the requested items of discovery detailed in the Plaintiff's motion for expedited disovery at [1], in the letter from 2018 quoted at the end. It's a specific InfoWars video segment from 2017 that was no longer publicly available as it had been removed by Youtube and Facebook. Rather than provide this video or explain that (and why) they couldn't, the defendant's lawyers simply ignored the discovery request for more than 2 years, despite the court granting the motion for expedited discovery in october 2019. This and numerous other abuses were the reason for the default judgement [2]. This information is available if you go looking for it. A lot more is presumably available if you have access to the necessary resources: Lexis Nexis, etc. However, the fact that some particular individual doesn't know it off the top of their head obviously has absolutely no bearing on whether the default judgement was reasonable. [1] https://infowarslawsuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2018-08-17-Heslin-Mt-for-Discovery.pdf https://infowarslawsuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2018-... [2] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21074211-alex-jones-default-judgment-orders-texas https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21074211-alex-jones-...
- kentm 4y ago
  Gonna tag onto your statement here because I like it. I'm a little bit floored that people still believe Alex Jones and Barnes' (Barnes is an InfoWars contributor) claims about discovery. They were caught in the trial itself with evidence that they hid. The whole "cell phone" moment was a big deal because it was explicitly a piece of evidence required by discovery that was not provided. They are lying about how discovery went down to appear more sympathetic.
- LBJsPNS 4y ago

dragonwriter 4y ago

> Which is strange, skipping over the trial and going straight to damages. Well, its unusual for a party with a business and sizable assets to protect to do the kinds of things that lead to default judgement, since that's pretty easy to avoid and potentially costly. But it's not unusual for a court to find default when parties steadfastly refuse to cooperate with court process, and Jones has had default rulings against him in two other Sandy Hook defamation cases. Which looks a lot like he was afraid that discovery would reveal something much worse than what was at issue in those cases.

jcranmer 4y ago
> Which looks a lot like he was afraid that discovery would reveal something much worse than what was at issue in those cases. And the great irony is that, because of his lawyer's mistake, he has lost the ability to keep from discovery an awful lot of things, so that revelation is likely to happen anyways.

notahacker 4y ago

It's not at all strange to skip over the evidence trial if one party consistently refuses to participate in the process of providing the evidence. Jones' lawyer accidentally sending the material he falsely claimed he didn't have after some months after he had been found guilty by default wasn't exculpatory...

nneonneo 4y ago

These are not summary judgments, they are default judgments. Alex Jones repeatedly failed to comply with court orders to produce evidence, which resulted in him being in default of the court. IANAL, but FRCP rule 37(b)(2)(A)(vi) very clearly indicates that a default judgment "against the disobedient party" is a permissible outcome of "[failing] to obey an order to provide or permit discovery". Essentially, Jones was found in contempt of court, and the judge slapped him with a default judgment. It's not strange at all.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> but FRCP rule 37(b)(2)(A)(vi) very clearly indicates that a default judgment "against the disobedient party" is a permissible outcome of "[failing] to obey an order to provide or permit discovery Nitpick: this is a state case and the Federal Rules don't apply, but I think most US jurisdictions have very broadly similar default rules.
- nneonneo 4y ago
  Thanks for the clarification! The equivalent rule in the Texas RCP is 215.2(b)(5), "If a party or an officer, director, or managing agent of a party...fails to comply with proper discovery requests...the court in which the action is pending may, after notice and hearing...[render] a judgment by default against the disobedient party".

callmeal 4y ago

That's actually a pretty bad comment - they commentators have no idea what they're talking about, and one of them even says "... assume it's the same under the US law" and goes on to disrepect the " ... judge, whatever her name is". Really, is this what you consider a "good comment"?

omnicognate 4y ago

The two people in that "Barnes Law" video engage in an extremely dishonest form of argument. According to them, the fact that somebody cannot name the specific evidence Jones' lawyers were ordered to produce in discovery somehow negates any views they might hold on the case, including that the default (not summary) judgement was fair. It's a cheap rhetorical trick for use when one has no better argument: come up with some detail one's opponent doesn't have to hand and attempt to claim that because they can't immediately answer that specific question they must therefore be wrong about everything. The use of this form of argument is in itself a strong indicator of bad faith. IANAL, but with a bit of Googling I found one of the requested items of discovery detailed in the Plaintiff's motion for expedited disovery at [1], in the letter from 2018 quoted at the end. It's a specific InfoWars video segment from 2017 that was no longer publicly available as it had been removed by Youtube and Facebook. Rather than provide this video or explain that (and why) they couldn't, the defendant's lawyers simply ignored the discovery request for more than 2 years, despite the court granting the motion for expedited discovery in october 2019. This and numerous other abuses were the reason for the default judgement [2]. This information is available if you go looking for it. A lot more is presumably available if you have access to the necessary resources: Lexis Nexis, etc. However, the fact that some particular individual doesn't know it off the top of their head obviously has absolutely no bearing on whether the default judgement was reasonable. [1] https://infowarslawsuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2018-08-17-Heslin-Mt-for-Discovery.pdf https://infowarslawsuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2018-... [2] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21074211-alex-jones-default-judgment-orders-texas https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21074211-alex-jones-...

kentm 4y ago
Gonna tag onto your statement here because I like it. I'm a little bit floored that people still believe Alex Jones and Barnes' (Barnes is an InfoWars contributor) claims about discovery. They were caught in the trial itself with evidence that they hid. The whole "cell phone" moment was a big deal because it was explicitly a piece of evidence required by discovery that was not provided. They are lying about how discovery went down to appear more sympathetic.
LBJsPNS 4y ago