A lawyer for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been suspended from practicing law in Connecticut for six months.
Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis ruled Thursday that attorney Norm Pattis engaged in misconduct in not safeguarding “highly confidential” medical and psychiatric records of plaintiffs suing Jones in Connecticut, records Bellis said were subject to a protective order.
“We cannot expect our system of justice or our attorneys to be perfect, but we can expect fundamental fairness and decency,” Bellis wrote in a memorandum of decision. “There was no fairness or decency in the treatment of the plaintiffs’ most sensitive and personal information, and no excuse for [Pattis’] misconduct.”
The suspension comes out of disciplinary proceedings that have been held since August to examine improper handling of records of relatives of Sandy Hook victims suing the Infowars host in Connecticut.
In her ruling, Bellis chastised Pattis for not safeguarding a hard drive containing records protected by a court order that was given to other attorneys for Jones in Texas.
Bellis said the hard drive was sent without the plaintiffs’ consent to a bankruptcy attorney representing Infowars in Texas named Kyung S. Lee. Lee then transferred the drive to another attorney representing Jones in Texas named Andino Reynal.
In a dramatic reveal on Aug. 3 in a Texas court, opposing counsel told Jones that Reynal produced records for a separate Texas lawsuit filed by relatives of Sandy Hook victims that Reynal shouldn’t have had access to.
Pattis told Connecticut Public that he plans to appeal the suspension.
Pattis represented Jones in a defamation lawsuit filed on behalf of a first responder and relatives of eight victims killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Jones has been ordered to pay 15 plaintiffs more than $1.4 billion in damages for lies he’s told about the shooting.
Attorneys for the families declined to comment on the suspension of Pattis.
