‘Our Powers for Good’

How Kyle Farrar and Mark Bankston won a $49 million jury award against InfoWars for Sandy Hook parents

Published in 2024 Texas Super Lawyers magazine

By Carlos Harrison on September 13, 2024

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Houston attorneys Kyle Farrar and Mark Bankston knew taking on Alex Jones and InfoWars would put them on the front line of a national culture war.

At the time, Bankston recalls, the incendiary right-wing internet and radio personality “was at the height of his powers,” with an audience in the millions worldwide. “The idea of holding InfoWars accountable for telling a lie at that point was sort of a revolutionary idea.”

So they anticipated the threats, accusations and conspiracy theories hurled at and about them. But it would have been next to impossible to foresee the four years of delays, the deliberate destruction of evidence, or the stunning courtroom “Perry Mason moment” yet ahead.

The case was the first of its kind against Jones to go to trial. It was the first time he was directly confronted in court by a parent of one of the 6- and 7-year-old children among the 26 victims of the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. And, 10 days after the trial began, it was the first time a jury awarded punitive damages in what, after a similar trial in Connecticut, would become nearly $1.5 billion in judgments against Jones.

When the parents contacted Farrar & Ball in 2018, the firm was handling a defamation suit against InfoWars by Marcel Fontaine, who had been misidentified by InfoWars as the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Before that, though, the six-attorney firm had focused primarily on automobile products liability.

“I have a friend who has a saying, ‘Use your powers for good,’” Farrar says. So when Bankston came into his office and said he’d just spent 20 minutes on the phone with one of the Sandy Hook parents, Farrar told him, “Let’s use our powers for good and see what we can do.”

Jesse Lewis, the 6-year-old son of clients Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, was one of the shooting victims. Jesse was hailed as a hero for standing his ground and shouting to his classmates to “Run! Run now!” as the gunman moved methodically from classroom to classroom, shooting anyone in his path.

Jones infamously called the shooting a “giant hoax.”

“Sandy Hook is a synthetic,” he said on his program, “completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured.”

As Heslin would later say on the witness stand, Jones’ comments about the Sandy Hook tragedy—repeated year after year—made his life “a living hell.”

They triggered a torrent of online abuse and threatening phone calls. Heslin’s house and car were shot at.

In that first phone call, Bankston says, Heslin told him, “‘I want to do something about this and I can’t find anybody who will do something about it.’ And I said, ‘Well, you can stop looking because you found him now.’”

That was in 2018. The case finally made it to trial in the summer of 2022, stalled by what Judge Maya Guerra Gamble called Jones’ “pervasive and persistent obstruction of the discovery process.”

Frustrating as it may have been at the time, Farrar and Bankston say the delay came with a silver lining. The judge issued default judgments against Jones for “flagrant bad faith” and eventually ordered him to pay sanctions totaling more than $1 million. That, says Bankston, covered his clients’ attorney fees and then some.

By 2022, only the damages and punitive portions remained.

As the case meandered toward trial, Farrar and Bankston grew accustomed to the barrage of online attacks and death threats from conspiracy theorists. But they also encountered an outpouring of support from across the country that came in unexpected ways.

An army of volunteers monitored every word uttered on Jones’ radio and internet programs and sent material they thought would help the attorneys in court. Many also sent donations intended to go toward legal expenses, although those monies ended up going to charities of the families’ choosing.

“We had thousands of people helping us,” Farrar says. “We got bombarded with emails and phone calls. And then letters started coming in, and people were sending us money. They wanted to contribute to the legal fund. And it’d be like $2, right?”

Along the way, too, the lawyers figured out their strategy: Let Jones be Jones.

“I deposed him three times for a total of 18 hours,” says Bankston. “What I quickly discovered of Jones is that the best thing you can do with him when he’s under oath is just demonstrate that he is a liar who doesn’t care about the process and will lie to the jury at any time.”

That played out most dramatically during the trial as Bankston cross-examined a visibly wide-eyed Jones.

“Did you know that, 12 days ago—12 days ago—your attorneys messed up and sent me an entire digital copy of your entire cellphone, with every text message you’ve sent for the past two years?” Bankston asked. “And that is how I know you lied to me when you said you didn’t have a text message about Sandy Hook.”

“This is your Perry Mason moment,” Jones responded.

Two days later, the 12 jurors awarded Jesse’s parents a total of $49.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

Within a few months, after the Connecticut trial consolidated the lawsuits of 15 plaintiffs—including the families of nine of the victims and a former FBI agent who responded to the scene—the amount soared to a whopping $1.44 billion.

That was nearly two years ago, and the families have yet to collect. After Jones’ company embarked on a failed bankruptcy, according to Bankston, the Texas and Connecticut plaintiffs are now starting collections efforts against him.

However much Jones eventually pays, Bankston says, the case “sends the message that if you are going to profit greatly by injecting lies into our culture, that may come with a terrific price.”

It also served as the springboard for a new practice area for the firm.

Last October, Bankston filed a defamation suit against Elon Musk over posts on X that suggested a California man took part in a brawl between neo-Nazi groups. “We were granted the right to take Musk’s deposition, which was then publicly released,” Bankston says. “The Travis County District Court rejected Musk’s motion to dismiss.”

And in April, Bankston filed suit accusing Newsmax, Univision and others of erroneously identifying his client, Mauricio Garcia, as the perpetrator in a deadly shooting at a Texas mall last year.

“We’re gonna be busy,” he says.


Keeping Up With Jones

The initial pleading in the case attributes a series of defamatory statements to Alex Jones and InfoWars. Among them:

The shooting was a “false flag” staged by the government.

“It’s got ‘inside job’ written all over it.”

“The whole thing is a giant hoax. … How do you deal with a total hoax? … It took me about a year, with Sandy Hook, to come to grips with the fact that the whole thing was fake. I did deep research.”

In court, under questioning by his own attorney, Jones said this:

“It’s 100 percent real.”

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