Justice Department, Sandy Hook families question Infowars bankruptcy
Source: Politico
The Justice Department and attorneys for families of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting are questioning the legitimacy of attempts by right-wing talk show host Alex Jones to put several businesses in his media empire into bankruptcy just as a trial was set to open in Texas, where he faced the possibility of being ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages.
Both the families and a Justice Department office asked a federal bankruptcy judge in Houston to put off an initial, emergency hearing scheduled for Friday morning to address Chapter 11 filings earlier this week by three entities linked to Jones Infowars brand: InfoW, IW Health and Prison Planet TV.
The requests to delay the hearing said that the bankruptcy filings seemed designed to halt long-standing defamation litigation in Texas and Connecticut over Jones bizarre claims that the 20 children and six adults killed in the shocking 2012 elementary school shooting had somehow staged their own deaths and that their families were crisis actors.
The Justice Departments Office of the U.S. Trustee told Judge Christopher Lopez the structure of Jones filing may demonstrate these cases are an abuse of the bankruptcy system. The government submission questioned why Jones had not filed for personal bankruptcy and why another business he controls, Free Speech Systems, was not included in the filings earlier this week.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/21/justice-department-sandy-hook-families-question-infowars-bankruptcy-00027079
I have the filings made by the DOJ Trustee and the CT. plaintiffs. They are fun reading
rpannier
(24,377 posts)He's not going bankrupt
kiri
(807 posts)I like reading these PDF files.
I could not find it on google.
Thanks,
Kiri
MyOwnPeace
(16,981 posts)but I can never find anything near 'fun' related to anything that Alex Jones has done to the parents/families of those that were slaughtered in the Sandy Hook school. This action is a travesty that everybody in America should be up in arms about and saying "F**K ANY CLAIM" that this slime ball dares to try - he represents the WORST that AMERICA could ever present!
(Again, "LetMyPeopleVote" - I mean NO 'slam' towards you - ANY shooting that kills 28 people and leaves the RepubliQans sitting with their thumbs up their A$$E$ without ANY 'prevention' laws is just beyond understanding....
)
LetMyPeopleVote
(146,760 posts)NullTuples
(6,017 posts)Wuddles440
(1,161 posts)but so true.
lapucelle
(18,467 posts)NullTuples
(6,017 posts)The Vatican has done so with dioceses that get sued for child molestation and lose. Money is moved out of the Diocese, then it declares bankruptcy as if it isn't part of the larger Church, just to avoid paying court ordered restitution to the victims. It's especially egregious for the RCC to do this as it is the wealthiest organization on the planet.
Thirteen Dioceses so far in the USA, starting with Phoenix, AZ in 2004 after losing a 44 million dollar lawsuit for the crimes of priest Maurice Grammond in 2000.
LetMyPeopleVote
(146,760 posts)This a subchapter 5 case filed under Section 11 of the bankruptcy code. Bankruptcy in general is very favorable to the debtors and subchapter 5 is a new creation that strives to be even more favorable to the debtors. Only the debtor gets to propose a plan and there are a ton of limitations on some of the normal protection for creditors. This proceeding is limited to small bankruptcies with less than $7.5 million in debt Jones and Free Speech System are not party to this sham bankruptcy because they have too much debt. This bankruptcy is a stunt. The US Trustee actually file a motion calling this proceeding a sham
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txsb.455827/gov.uscourts.txsb.455827.18.0.pdf
Juanita Jean (her son is the main litigator in the Texas cases), my son (he is a partner is biglaw firm and I had fun listening to this proceeding. Jones has found some low life attorneys to represent him and these idiots actually were offended that the plaintiffs/victims of his torts were not happy with Jones' shitty offer.
Link to tweet
https://abovethelaw.com/2022/04/alex-joness-bankruptcy-lawyer-indignant-that-sandy-hook-plaintiffs-arent-grateful-he-spared-them-their-day-in-court/
Admitting that your client is placing three worthless companies into a sham bankruptcy for the express purpose of stopping a jury from assessing damages is a weird flex. But why should anything about this freak show be normal, right?....
But then the attorneys for the Texas and Connecticut plaintiffs got up to argue that the bankruptcy shouldnt be allowed to go forward at all, since it was clearly a ploy to escape liquidated damages in Connecticut, where a jury trial was due to take place later this year, and Texas, where trial was set for this coming Monday. And furthermore, three companies with no assets which appear to conduct no business at all are not appropriate vehicles for subchapter V bankruptcy under 11 U.S.C. § 101(51C), they insisted.
At which point Kyung Shik Lee, attorney for the supposedly bankrupt Jones entities, got up and ranted indignantly at the Sandy Hook plaintiffs that this was the first offer of money that theyd seen in ten years, and hed heard nothing but complaints about his generous offer to pin their arms behind their backs and deny them their day in court.
The plaintiffs only filed their cases in 2018. Lest we forget, what happened ten years ago is that a gunman opened fire at an elementary school, killing 26 people. After which Mr. Lees client spent a year telling his deranged audience that the plaintiffs were simply pretending their children had been murdered, subjecting them to vicious harassment and death threats that forced at least one of them to go into hiding for his own safety.
Nevertheless, Lee insisted that bankruptcy code and courts are the appropriate vehicle for resolving a sad and complex situation which was actually on the eve of being decided by a jury. In fact, he continued, the Sandy Hook plaintiffs should thank Jones for his good faith effort here to do something constructive with the bankruptcy process, since otherwise the Texas plaintiffs might get all the money by dint of getting to the courthouse first. There are limited funds and were trying to maximize it so it goes to the plaintiffs he huffed, seeming hurt and offended that someone might suggest he had anything but the purest motives.
According to my son, Lee mainly does bankruptcy committee work where you represent creditors or other parties in various committees in a bankruptcy. It seems that Committee attorneys tend to like to bluster and raise a fuss to try to get more money for their clients. Committee attorneys are not responsible for structuring the case and play a role in negotiating the plan used to get the debtors out of bankruptcy.
This was an interesting hearing. Jones' attorneys are assholes. My son explained the bankruptcy process to Juanita Jean and she decided that she did not need to call her son to get his explanation. My son does restructure work at a large fir and has been in a good number of bankruptcy hearings.