(JTA) — The father of a Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre victim won a defamation lawsuit against the authors of a book that denied the 2012 shooting took place.
Lenny Pozner, whose 6-year-old son Noah was the youngest victim in the attack by a lone gunman at the Connecticut school, filed the suit against the publisher Moon Rock Books and the authors of “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook.” The publisher said it would no longer sell the book.
It is one of at least nine cases with Pozner, who is Jewish, as the lead plaintiff against those who deny the school massacre took place. The suits have been filed in federal and state courts in Connecticut, Florida, Texas and Wisconsin, according to The Associated Press.
A Wisconsin judge ruled Monday that Pozner had been defamed by authors James Fetzer and Mike Palacek. A trial to decide damages has been set for October.
The book claimed, for example, that Noah’s death certificate had been faked and the child in fact never existed, and that Pozner and the parents of the other victims were crisis actors.
“My face-to-face interactions with Mr. Pozner have led me to believe that Mr. Pozner is telling the truth about the death of his son,” Dave Gahary, the principal officer at Moon Rock Books, said in a statement Monday. “I extend my most heartfelt and sincere apology to the Pozner family.”
Pozner, joined by other parents of Sandy Hook victims, filed a lawsuit last year against radio talk show host Alex Jones, host of the conspiracy-driven Infowars website, for continuing to insist that the attack never occurred.
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