A bankruptcy judge approved the liquidation of the personal assets of Alex Jones on Friday, with proceeds expected to go toward the families of the so-called Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims.

At the same time, Judge Christopher Lopez with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston dismissed the chapter 11 case of Free Speech Systems, the owner of Infowars, siding with Jones, who said the dismissal would better serve the creditors and FSS employees.

The ruling punctuated a lengthy legal saga stemming from Jones’s alleged false statements that the 2012 school shooting was a government hoax. Courts in Texas and Connecticut found him liable by default for defaming the families of shooting victims who were subject to harassment and threats after his remarks. He owes more than $1 billion in defamation damages to the families of the alleged victims. [MORE]

The dependent media has mislead the public to believe that an actual trial took place and a jury made a factual finding that Jones made a false statements about Sandy Hook after examining evidence during a contested court case. Specifically, the media has mislead the public to believe that the families demonstrated with evidence that Sandy Hook actually took place and thereafter a court found Jones liable for defamation for stating otherwise. However, contrary to constant media mischaracterization, there were no actual contested trials. Rather, default judgements were made against Jones for his lawyers’ failure to provide documents and meet filing deadlines. No trial ever took place. Once a default judgment was made by the court the only thing left for the jury to do was to determine the amount of damages for the alleged defamation. Jones participated in that part of the proceeding. The court proceedings only pertained to how much should be awarded in damages.

A default judgment transforms a defending party’s admissions (which occur upon entry of the default) into a final judgment; it usually terminates the litigation by producing an enforceable, final award in favor of the pleader. When the damages amount is not a sum certain, the court may convene an evidentiary hearing- simply to determine damages, not the underlying claim which is deemed to have occurred through the default. Although the entry of default deprives the defaulting party of the right to contest most of the complaint’s factual allegations, that party may contest the amount of damages. The Dependent media has mischaracterized the hearing on damages as a “jury trial” in order to confuse the proceeding with an actual jury trial on the merits. [MORE]