NEWTOWN — Proper-wing media pundit Alex Jones’ onetime lawyer Norm Pattis has been suspended for six months after a courtroom discovered he improperly disclosed delicate medical details about households of Sandy Hook college capturing victims.
“We can not anticipate our system of justice or our attorneys to be excellent, however we will anticipate basic equity and decency,” Decide Barbara Bellis wrote in her decision, launched Thursday. “There was no equity or decency within the therapy of the plaintiffs’ most delicate and private info, and no excuse for the respondent’s misconduct.”
Jones has been preventing allegations that he and his firm Free Speech Techniques defamed the households of youngsters and adults slain within the Sandy Hook college capturing in December 2012 by casting doubt on the truth of the bloodbath — particularly, that the 26 college students and educators really died. Through the first of a number of associated trials, in Texas, Mark Bankston, the prosecuting legal professional, revealed on Aug. 3, 2022, he had accidentally been sent Jones’ cellphone information, the protected medical information of eight Connecticut plaintiffs and the protected medical information of an FBI agent additionally suing Jones in a separate case. The revelation made nationwide headlines.
Pattis, who defended Jones on the second trial, in Waterbury, was recognized because the source of the leak, as he violated a protecting order limiting entry to the information to particular people and for particular functions, in response to Bellis. In Might 2022, months earlier than the leak was uncovered in courtroom, Pattis directed an affiliate at his New Haven agency to switch the Connecticut plaintiffs’ information to Jones’ Texas legal professional Kyung Lee though Lee was not a licensed recipient, Bellis stated. Pattis additionally allegedly did not disclose that the information have been protected by a courtroom order, designating the information as confidential or inform Lee that the information have been delicate.
In flip, Lee transferred the information to a different one in every of Jones’ Texas attorneys, Andino Reynal, with Pattis’ approval, in response to Bellis. That June, Reynal’s assistant emailed a hyperlink to an archive of supplies that mistakenly included the information to Bankston, Bellis stated. Whereas Bankston knowledgeable Reynal’s assistant of the inappropriate contents of the archive, Bellis stated, Reynal did not request the return of the information inside the 10-day “clawback” interval.
“With respect to precise or potential damage, the plaintiffs’ delicate, protected information have been handed round to Lee, then to Reynal, then to Bankston, with out their consent,” Bellis wrote.
Pattis has been a member of the Connecticut bar since 1993 and had no public disciplinary historical past on the time of the alleged misconduct, in response to Bellis. Given Pattis’ excessive stage of expertise, Bellis wrote, “there is no such thing as a acceptable excuse” for his alleged habits. He’s banned from training legislation in Connecticut during the suspension.
caroline.tien@hearst.com
