Parents of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre are pressing a company with connections to Infowars host Alex Jones to disclose more information about its finances.
The Sandy Hook parents, including two with a nearly $50 million judgment against Jones, Sept. 9 filed an emergency motion asking US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas to force PQPR Holdings Limited LLC to respond to their discovery requests.
The plaintiffs believe PQPR, owned by right-wing conspiracy theorist Jones and his parents, received millions of dollars from Infowars’ bankrupt parent, Free Speech Systems LLC, after courts in Texas and Connecticut found Free Speech and Jones liable for defamation for calling the mass murder a hoax. They say Free Speech transferred its assets to keep them away from the reach of creditors, including the Sandy Hook families.
The state courts entered default judgments for some Sandy Hook families. In August, a Texas jury ordered Jones to pay almost $50 million in damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son, Jesse, was among those murdered. The Connecticut court damages trial is set to begin Tuesday.
The plaintiffs have served PQPR with discovery requests for financial records to look for grounds to recover payments from Free Speech to PQPR and invalidate Free Speech’s alleged $54 million debt to PQPR.
Before the Texas court entered its liability judgments, “FSS had no memory of this $54 million debt,” the plaintiffs said in their emergency motion. “But after these default judgments were entered in favor of the Texas Plaintiffs, FSS conveniently recalled these ostensible debts and began paying PQPR about $11,000 a day.”
Judge Christopher M. Lopez agreed to hear the families’ discovery motion Tuesday.
The families’ request comes as PQPR’s own motion to restrict the financial inquiry to a bankruptcy trustee, automatically appointed in cases filed under Subchapter V of Chapter 11 designed for small businesses, remains pending. PQPR Sept. 8 filed a request to expedite a hearing on the motion.
Sandy Hook families call the motion an attempt by PQPR to avoid its obligations to respond to legitimate discovery requests.
It’s also a tactic to avoid an earlier motion by the families to appoint a tort claims committee and divest Free Speech from the ability to make operational or bankruptcy decisions during the case, they said.
The case is In re Free Speech Systems LLC, Bankr. S.D. Tex., No. 4:22-60043, motion filed 9/9/22.
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