Written By: Aryeh Kraiman
Background
On October 14th, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Alex Jones’s challenge to the nearly $1.3 billion dollar verdict in a defamation case brought by families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The original verdict stemmed from a 2022 trial in a Connecticut court, that addressed only damages, as Jones had already defaulted on the merits of the case. The jury awarded the families $965 million in compensatory damages, and the judge ladder added punitive damages that, even after reduction, brought the total to roughly $1.3 billion dollars. This an amount that Jones claims is the largest defamation verdict in U.S. history.
Due to the verdict’s immense size, Jones has filed for bankruptcy, and it remains unlikely that the families of the Sandy Hook victims will recover the full amount. There have been efforts to liquidate Jones’s assets, such as his Infowars media company. However, an auction, in which The Onion was the winning bidder, was voided by a bankruptcy judge due to procedural flaws in the sale process. Additionally, Jones has been accused of hiding assets. In the months leading up to his bankruptcy it was alleged “Jones and his father fraudulently transferred nearly $1.5m to various other Jones-associated entities in the months leading up to the bankruptcy.” That is among other schemes to conceal money, including having debt tied to a shell company that was associated with him. To date, the plaintiffs have not received any substantial payment.
An attorney for the Sandy Hook families said Jones is “throwing every roadblock in the way to avoid accountability.” While Jones’s conduct is undeniably wrong, the extraordinary size of the verdict may ironically make it less likely that the victims’ families will receive justice in the form of monetary compensation.
Large Verdicts Mean Payday? Or Do They?
$1.3 billion, let that number sit for a second. According to Forbes, there are roughly 902 billionaires in the United States. That would mean there would be at most only 902 people in the United States that could afford such a verdict, assuming each had an extra $300 million to spare. Alex Jones was never close: a forensic economist in 2022 estimated Jones and Free Speech Systems (the parent company of Infowars) had a “combined net worth likely fell between $135 million and $270 million.”
A similar dynamic unfolded in Georgia in 2018, when a jury awarded a woman $1 billion in damages. The plaintiffs there acknowledged the defendant would be unlikely to pay the full amount because the defendant simply did not have a billion dollars. While the verdict was satisfying for the victim, it raises a hard question: when damages so vastly exceed a defendant’s means, does the judgment still serve redress even when monetary compensation is impossible?
Whole Without Payday? The Answer May Be Yes
The primary aim of tort law is to provide the injured party redress to make them whole. So can the victim truly become whole through a symbolic verdict that will likely never be paid?
For Robbie Parker, whose daughter was a victim of the Sandy Hook massacre, the answer seems to be yes. Even though he wasn’t sure the money would be paid, the verdict provided redress because it publicly affirmed the harm he endured and held Alex Jones accountable for causing it. The judgment restored his sense of agency, it allowed him to reclaim his voice and begin to heal. In Parker’s eyes, redress came not from a check that may never arrive, but from society recognizing that the threats, lies, and harassment he suffered were wrong, and that the person responsible was finally held accountable.
For Hope Cheston, the Georgian woman who received the $1 billion dollar verdict, the sense of redress also came not from the prospect of payment, but from accountability. The verdict represented society’s recognition of the wrong done to her and the seriousness of her suffering. It affirmed that what happened to her mattered and that her abuser, including those that failed to stop him, were publicly commended for their actions. Like Robbie Parker, she found redress not in the money she was unlikely to receive, but in the verdict’s acknowledgement that she was wronged and that justice, at least symbolically, had been served.
Conclusion
While receiving money is valuable, it is not what truly vindicates victims in a lawsuit. Their redress does not come from payment, but from having society affirm that they matter and holding the person who wronged them accountable. Yet society often equates justice with large verdicts, assuming that the higher the award, the greater the redress. As the cases above demonstrate, however, payment is not always what is needed for there to be justice. The true measure of redress lies in public acknowledgment and accountability, not in the size of a dollar figure. Ultimately, society should pay less attention to the number on the verdict and more to what that verdict represents: the collective condemnation of wrongdoing.
Sources:
Dietrich Knauth, US Supreme Court rejects Alex Jones’ challenge to $1.4 billion defamation judgment, Reuters (last updated October 14, 2025).
Dave Collins, After judge rejects The Onion’s winning auction bid, Alex Jones keeps Infowars for now, Associated Press (December 11, 2024).
Tovia Smith, 3 years in, Sandy Hook families still wait to collect what Alex Jones owes them, National Public Radio (June 6, 2025).
A Martinez; Obed Manuel, More billionaires than ever ranked in Forbes’ annual list. Here are the top 10, National Public Radio (last updated April 1, 2025).
Associated Press, Alex Jones accused of trying to hide assets from Sandy Hook families, The Guardian (June 17, 2025).
James Doubek, Georgia Jury Awards $1 Billion In Lawsuit Over Girl’s Rape, National Public Radio (May 24, 2018).
Legal Information Institute, tort, Cornell Law School.
KC Baker, Inside a Sandy Hook Father’s Fight to Help Bring Down Alex Jones and Reclaim His Daughter’s Memory (Exclusive), People (November 13, 2024).