A few notes for the media from the Alex Jones verdicts:

1. Although Jones forfeited his right to mount a First Amendment defense because he defaulted by not producing documents in response to the plaintiffs’ document requests, the size of the verdict and punitive damages award (nearly $1 billion) leveled against him by a Connecticut jury will empower other potential plaintiffs who believe their reputations have been damaged to use defamation lawsuits to redress their grievances. More important, it’s sure to inspire plaintiffs’ lawyers who have not – until now – viewed defamation cases as a way to make big bucks.  With other high profile defamation cases floating around – see, e.g., Depp v. Heard, Dominion v. Fox News – and several Supreme Court Justices expressing hostility to the “actual malice” standard, the next few years will undoubtedly see a rise in defamation claims, many of which will target the media.
   
2. It’s still unclear why Jones preferred defaulting to producing documents, but that was clearly a mistake, and should make most defendants tremble at the consequences of failing to fully comply with discovery obligations. It’s also a lesson for defense counsel, who must sometimes yank compliance from the tight jaws of recalcitrant clients.
   
3. And about those documents:  The inadvertent disclosure of the contents of Jones’s cell phone in the case brought against him by two families in Texas (where he was ordered to pay nearly $50 million) doomed his defense, raising all kinds of questions about how a forensic copy of the contents ended up on a .ftp site that was then shared with plaintiffs’ counsel, and why Jones’s lawyers didn’t act more quickly and with more force to “claw back” the inadvertent disclosure (which is permitted under the rules). At a minimum, it highlights the potential for disaster in the “electronic discovery” process for lawyers who fail to adequately supervise disclosure, and for clients who fail to impose strict document retention protocols on the duration and type of materials maintained on devices.