Extract from Brett Burney’s article “Mr. Jones and Me – Exploring the Practical Ediscovery Lessons from the Alex Jones and Sandy Hook Litigation”
An important word has been missing from much of the talk about Alex Jones: Ediscovery. But ediscovery is where it all went wrong in the fiasco of his case.
In a bizarre twist of events that are even “too dumb” for a Law & Order episode (according to an original show-writer), the world recently ogled the video of a slack-jawed, wide-eyed Alex Jones realizing that his entire text message history was disclosed to opposing counsel. The tantalizing event occurred during the cross-examination of the Infowars owner in a defamation suit brought by victims of the Sandy Hook massacre that completely conflicted with Mr. Jones’ repeated insistence that the text messages never existed.
With apologies to the Counting Crows, I’ve been wrestling to make sense of the apparent ediscovery blunders involved in the dump of Mr. Jones’ emails and text messages. Two months have passed since the initial fiasco, which has given me some time for reflection. And as his name re-entered the news last week with a separate defamation trial, I separated my questions regarding the earlier text message turmoil into two main areas: first, the bewildering procedural uncertainty, and second, the reckless logistical indiscretion.
Just Ask Nicely!
The procedural questions regarding the actions of Mr. Jones’ counsel have been expertly discussed in a variety of cyber-channels and virtual water-coolers, and some of the questions are just mind-boggling.
